Medley
by lionesseyes13
Summary: Mac's perspective on events following Tim Harrer's arrival at practice.
1. Chapter 1

"_They will never forget you 'till somebody new comes along. Where have you been lately? There's a new kid in town. Everybody loves him, don't they?"—_**New Kid in Town**_, Eagles, 1976. _

New Kid

In hindsight, Rob thought that there should have been a dark whisper in the rink that only the team could hear, or maybe a deep chill in the bone. A tautness in the air. Some textbook premonition, but, because life wasn't like a Hitchcock horror movie, he was laughing with his teammates as they stretched about Rizzo's meatballs. Rizzo always cooked them either with spaghetti or in sandwiches when he was in charge of making dinner for the team, and, though they ribbed him ruthlessly for this, they loved his meatballs and the fact that he never stopped making them. There were precious few things in 1979 that a person could cling to with any certainty, but they could depend upon Rizzo and his meatballs.

There were misfortunes that Rob almost expected in life—getting checked just before he made a great shot or receiving a black eye in a fistfight—and then there were other sudden moments that he could not plan for that spiraled out of control into impossible time, dragging him into an alternate universe that had become all too real, like when Tim Harrer arrived at practice. There had been practice before Tim came, and there was practice after he arrived. The two had painfully little in common.

"Timmy," Herb called, and the entire team froze, turning to gape at Timmy Harrer as he entered the arena and made his way over to the ice. He looked discordant, as out of place as an electric guitar at an opera, in his golden Gophers uniform, and Rob couldn't help but feel as if he had never known this right-winger who had been his line mate so many times at the U.

On ice, they had always had a powerful chemistry, which was why Herb had often paired them together, and, along with Don Micheletti, they had been a particularly explosive force in the playoffs of '79. Somehow, those memories of shared successes seemed distant, like blurry photographs, and almost as though they had happened to another Rob McClanahan. If Tim approached him now to say hello, it would take a lot of pressure on his tongue to keep him from blurting out blankly, sounding like a child expected to hug a barely remembered extended family member, "Have we met?"

"Who the hell is that?" hissed Rizzo as Tim climbed over the railing onto the ice and skated over to Herb and Patrick.

"How you doing, Tim?" asked Herb, as Tim twisted his hands nervously, clearly feeling the weight of the suspicious, speculative glances the whole team was leveling upon him. This, Rob noted with a sinking stomach, was uncharacteristically polite and chatty for Herb. Typically, if a player saw him on campus and said hello, that player would be lucky if they got a grunted greeting or a brisk nod of acknowledgement in return.

Rob had distinct, awkward memories of ending up on elevators in hotels alone with Herb, who would say absolutely nothing for twenty floors, leaving Rob with nothing to do but stare at the glowing numbers of the floors they were passing all too slowly and listen to the canned elevator music as if it were as poignant as anything produced by Beethoven or Mozart. Standing next to Herb on an elevator was worse than being next to a stranger.

With a stranger, Rob could always pass the time by putting on his mingling smile and striking up a conversation about the weather, sports, or, if he was really desperate, the news, but he could never find the courage to break the ice with Herb like that. The silence with Herb wasn't the natural quiet between strangers who had met for a few moments and would likely never see one another again as long as they both lived; it was the unnatural silence that descended between two people who had known each other for years and still couldn't make small talk.

As a result, seeing Herb go out of his way to make a player feel welcome with a friendly greeting was enough to make Rob wonder if Herb's body had been possessed by aliens, a wild theory that he thought became only more credible as Herb went on, "Good to see you."

"Thanks, Coach," Tim answered, but it was plain that white wine and a red carpet could not have made him feel comfortable when the team was glaring at him as if he made Hitler look like Helen Keller.

Swallowing, Rob wished that Tim would leave before he tried to break someone's Olympic dream. Otherwise, Rob might have to do something horrible to someone he had always regarded as a friend, because it was clear, by Tim's presence, that another last cut—besides the impending cut that nobody but Herb ever talked about-would be made. It would be only fair of Rob to come down on the side of those who had put their entire lives on hold for Herb for the past few months, and who had gone through Hell (which was so much colder than the Bible said) on that Oslo rink.

Jim Craig seemed to be thinking along the same lines, because he leaned toward John Harrington, saying, "Hey, Bah."

"Yeah?" Bah replied.

"Who's that guy?" demanded Jim sharply.

"Timmy Harrer," explained Bah, his tone flat. "Plays for the Gophers. Having a big year."

Rob did know that Tim was having a strong year with the Gophers, keeping the team afloat in the absence of players like Neal Broten and Mike Ramsey. The team wasn't doing as well as it would have done if Herb were at the helm, but it wasn't humiliating the U, either.

There were scattered, mutinous mutters around the stretching circle at this—boys asking their neighbors what Tim was doing here only to be told by those beside them, "No idea," although Rob suspected that everyone actually understood quite well why Tim was here and merely wished that they did not. Denial seemed much more attractive than the truth that one of them was about to be replaced, and that, by extension, any of them could find their spots taken by a newcomer at any moment, because Herb obviously regarded them as interchangeable parts that had been mass produced off a hockey player assembly line.

"Why is he here?" Silk's voice rose above all the rest as he eyed the Minnesota players, wondering whether they had kept a secret as devastating as Tim's invitation to practice hushed. Already, Rob noticed grimly, Tim was ruining their team trust and cohesion. He had to go right now, before he did any irreparable damage. "Hey, you guys know he was coming?"

Verchota shook his head, and Rob knew—with a sureness that knotted his intestines—that things were about to get truly awful when one of the smartest people he had ever met, Phil Verchota, looked as if he were waiting for the punchline that would transform this circumstance from an insult into just a sick joke.

Rob longed to be deaf as he heard Herb tell Tim, "So, listen, why don't you warm up, stretch out, and jump on Johnson's line for the day, okay? Good to have you here."

Johnson's line. Rob wanted to stamp his skate on the ice, because he wanted to look at Tim, who was proof that nobody's spot on this team was remotely secure, as little as possible, and, if Tim were on the same line as Rob, that would still be too much for his sanity. The position of right-winger on Johnson's line belonged to Eric Strobel when Herb decided that Strobel's speed compensated for his streakiness or to Dave Silk when Herb felt that Silk's steadiness made up for his occasional slowness. The position of right-wing didn't, and, if Rob McClanahan had anything to do with it (which, he hated to admit, he probably didn't) , never would, belong to Tim Harrer.

_Tim Harrer hasn't even started to play with Mark and me_, Rob wanted to scream into Herb's impassive face, _and I already know that it's a terrible idea. I want our line back the way it was yesterday. If you must tinker with our line, because I realize that you always have to see if you can make a good thing better even if you run the risk of ruining it entirely, put in someone from our team. Don't make us work with an outsider. _

Tim nodded and went over to join the circle in an empty space next to Rob, who moved over more than was strictly necessary to accommodate the newcomer, as if the right-winger who had been his line mate so often in the past was a pariah not to be gotten within a foot of.

"Hey, Mac." Tim smiled bravely, as if he were determined to ignore the distance that Rob had deliberately tried to establish between them.

"Hello," responded Rob, his unenthusiastic voice emphasizing that, in his opinion, Tim had already worn his welcome out, and then he retreated completely from Harrer, though they remained side by side.

Far too soon for Rob's liking, they had finished their stretching and warm-ups, and he found himself speeding down the ice with Mark and Tim as part of the first drill. Figuring that if he didn't glance at Tim, he could pretend that the right-winger was Silky or Strobel, Rob focused all his attention on Mark as they skated around the defensive line, trading passes and ignoring Tim even when he was open and perfectly positioned.

When he saw Mark pull the puck sharply to the right near the goal, Rob sensed what the center was thinking and glided over to the back of the net's opposite side. His stick was there to catch Mark's pass and deflect the puck into the goal.

Rob stifled a grin, because while he felt this was a particularly smooth way to score, he recognized that his and Mark's victories were Jim's defeats. It was wrong to celebrate when your teammate was probably resisting the urge to bash his stick against his helmet in frustration.

"Johnson!" snapped Herb, and Rob exhaled gustily. There was no chance that even Herb would be insane enough to replace Mark with Tim. No matter how impressive Tim's statistics had been this season, they would be overshadowed by the brightness of Mark's achievements, because Mark was widely regarded as the best college hockey player in the country. Herb was just ripping into Mark to demonstrate that, if even the team's MVP was far from immune to criticism, everybody else had better be quaking in their skates at the prospect of being replaced by Harrer or some other unwelcome new kid. "Why did you pass to McClanahan and not to Harrer?"

For a few seconds, Mark paused, as if to ensure that this was not a rhetorical question, and then stated calmly, "I knew where Mac would be before I passed and what he would do with the puck when he got it, but I could only guess where Harrer would be or what he would do with the puck if I passed to him. Under the circumstances, I chose to go with what I knew."

"That's where you went wrong." Herb's lips pressed together in their thinnest, most disapproving line. "Practice is a place for eliminating uncertainties and testing new options with line mates. Next drill, that's what I expect you to do with Harrer."

"Yes, Coach." Mark nodded obediently, but Rob could tell by the resentful flame in the center's vivid blue eyes that he was no more excited by the notion of having Tim on his line for an extended period of time than Rob was.

Pivoting, Herb rested his palm on Tim's shoulder and remarked in a conversational tone that still garnered the interest of every player on the ice and bench, "Beautiful positioning, Timmy. That's what I like to see. Just continue creating excellent opportunities for your line."

"Right, Coach." His expression more than a little nonplussed, because Herb had probably never given him that many compliments in his entire playing career at the U, nevertheless all in one breath, Tim nodded swiftly. Seeing Tim all but squirm in Herb's grasp, Rob thought that Buzz was on the money when he described Herb as a coach who could squeeze your shoulder and hold a honed blade to your throat at the same time. The resultant cognitive dissonance would be yours to untangle as best you could hours, days, and years later. "Will do."

"Very good." Herb released the obviously relieved Tim and then barked at the bench, "Coneheads, you're up, let's go."

As he, Mark, and Tim skated back to the bench, and Buzz, Bah, and Pav hopped over the rail onto the ice, Rob's jaw clenched. No matter how many goals and assists he and Mark accumulated in the exhibitation games, Herb had never told either of them that their positioning was beautiful or that they created excellent opportunities on the ice. Meanwhile, Tim had only had to stand in his skates-not even pass or score—to be praised like the reincarnation of Christ. That was so unfair that it required an exertion of will not to pound his stick against the glass as he slid over the railing and plopped miserably onto the bench.

When Tim attempted to seat himself next to Rob, he glared at the right-winger with all the regal disdain of a vexed lion until the other young man drifted down the bench, finally slipping into a space between Christian and Christoff. Taking a perverse pleasure in seeing how neither Christian nor Christoff acknowledged Tim's presence, Rob titled his head toward Mark, who was seated on his right, and whispered bitterly, "Funny that our goal wasn't beautiful, but Harrer just skating around on the ice was. No accounting for taste and all that."

He referred to it as their goal, since, to him, that was what it was. It was Mark's pass, and Rob's shot—and the two had been sown seamlessly into a goal that only Herb was blind enough to miss the beauty of.

"Relax, Mac." Mark gave his gentle grin. "We know it was a fine play, even if Herb doesn't. That's all that means anything."

"Of course." Rob's tone was pure irony. "I forgot that we're the ones who decide the final roster, not Herb. I'm so stupid that my poor brain cell must be getting lonely in the vacuum of my skull."

"You're a laugh a minute." Mark rolled his eyes. "Anyway, while we don't determine the final roster, we do decide on our actions. That's what we have control over, Robbie, not how Herb will perceive them. We need to focus on what we can impact, not what we can't."

"No wonder you're a center." Rob smirked as if he had come up with a word play that he believed made him by far the wittiest person in America now that Ben Franklin was dead. "You have a centering effect on people."

"Was that supposed to be a pun?" asked Mark, shaking his head in pity. "Or did you just get hit in the forehead with the puck while I wasn't looking?"

"If you're going to be the sarcastic one on this line, then I'll have to be the calming one." Rob wagged a warning finger. "Think about what a catastrophe that will be before you open your mouth to offer another snide comment."

Mark chuckled, and the two of them had just enough time to gulp down some water from their bottles before Herb shouted, "Johnson line up!"

"Let's just do what Herb said and pass to Harrer," muttered Mark, as they clambered onto the ice, where Tim joined them, and Rob gave a reluctant nod of agreement.

Unfortunately, however, they discovered that this was easier said than done. Whenever they tried to pass to Harrer, they either overshot or undershot him, and, when he had recovered the puck and attempted to pass it to one of them, they would inevitably find themselves in the wrong position. Finally, after Rob had rounded off this whole fiasco with a poorly aimed shot that skidded three inches wide of the left goal post, Herb blew his whistle.

Rob halted, took a deep breath, and braced himself for the explosion, which came a second later when Herb snarled, "McClanahan! Johnson! You look like chickens skating around with your heads cut off. You're supposed to be passing, shooting, and scoring, not drifting around in a daze like drunks stumbling home from the bar at dawn."

Humiliated by his own terrible performance but also irked by Herb's insistence on blaming him and Mark for Harrer destroying their line's chemistry, Rob glanced over at Mark, who hadn't skated a step or lowered his defiantly lifted chin. Instead, he just stood there, mouth pressed together grimly, and anger and frustration boiling in his eyes. Rob knew that look and how it felt to be wearing it on his own face. Too many times over the last four years, he had stared at Herb just like that, battling the compulsion to scream out his rage and disappointment.

Seeing Mark's distress, Rob's own aggravation came spewing out of him in a sardonic stream, "Sorry, Coach, but you're the one who told us not to pass to each other and score. Don't blame us for following your advice."

"Unless you're deaf or dumb, you know that's not what I told you." Herb offered Rob his most withering glare. "Maybe if you and Johnson listened better, I'd have a starting line that could score, but since your ears appear to be clogged, I might have search elsewhere for a first line."

Rob wanted to retort that he and Mark were doing the best they could, and, if they weren't doing something right it was Herb's fault, not theirs, since he was the coach, and they were just college players who weren't _supposed _to know everything yet, so Herb should stop yelling for once. However, this protest died before it reached his lips when he saw Mark catch his eyes and shake his head slightly in a gesture that meant Mark believed any further argument would only worsen an already pretty nightmarish situation.

Deciding that it was not fair to upset his line mate more just to appease his pride, Rob bit his tongue.

Satisfied that Rob had been shoved back into his place, Herb turned to Tim and said in a much milder manner, "Magnificent effort, Timmy. Keep up the good work. That's what I want from the people who will stay on this team."

"I'm going to be sick," Rob hissed to Mark, pretending to gag as they returned to the bench for a water break. "To Herb, it's all about Timmy now. Listening to him talk is basically to hear him say, 'Lovely skating, Timmy—I don't think anyone ever figured out how to really skate until you came along to show the world how it should be done. That was such a great effort, Timmy, and can I have your autograph? Would your parents mind if I adopted you, Timmy, because my children aren't as wonderful as you are.' Nauseating doesn't even begin to cover this level of fawning."

As he concluded his rant, Rob's eyes found Tim, seated once again between Christian and Christoff, even though Tim was the last person he wanted to look at, and he couldn't help but flush when he saw that Tim seemed perfectly aware that Rob was venting to Mark about him. Wishing that he did not feel the guilty flames flaring on his cheeks, Rob forced himself to put on his fakest North Oaks smile—the one that revealed all his teeth but didn't reach his eyes. The one that was supposed to assure the recipient that he was their best friend and would never say anything bad about them, although, if he was offering such a smile, he had probably just finished badmouthing them. The one meant to show the world that he was a nice, even-tempered young man when in reality he was fighting the urge to punch someone in the face. The one that he hated himself for knowing how to give so reflexively when a situation arose where it was necessary.

And, he thought, his stomach churning around the toast he had eaten for breakfast, he should never have needed to smile like that at a former teammate from the U. From his very first weeks at the U, Rob had vowed to himself that he wouldn't let Herb's harsh coaching make him jealous of other players when they received praise or turn his friendships into rivalries for whatever scraps of approval and affection Herb deigned to mete out. Besides, Rob had always perceived himself as the honest type, who would rather criticize a person to their face than behind their back, and who would do anything for a friend.

Oh, and Tim Harrer was a friend, even now, but there just weren't enough spots on the Olympic Team for all of Rob's friends who wanted to be on it, and Rob would prefer to see someone like Rizzo—who had worked so hard in practices for months—make the cut than a newcomer like Tim. Rob's problem, he realized with a pang, was that he had too many friends. He couldn't be loyal to them all, which meant that he would have to betray not only Harrer but also himself.

"Close your eyes and take a deep breath, Mac," Mark advised, fixing a concerned glance upon Rob. "You look like you're about to hyperventilate."

Thinking that he wouldn't mind getting away from the world and the awful choices it forced him to make, Rob shut his eyes. He welcomed the blackness behind his lids because it matched the darkness of a mind and heart that were already determined to craft a way to sabotage Tim's efforts to join this team. On the inside, he was even worse than a vulture, because not only did he feast on dead bodies; he was the one who killed the creatures with his talons. Not wanting to look at the darkness inside of himself any longer, Rob opened his eyes to find Mark looking at him sternly.

"What?" Rob demanded tersely, his daily quota of patience already sapped up.

"I didn't see you take a deep breath," answered Mark, his expression firm. "I think it would help you calm down."

"I don't want to be a calm. I want to be righteously indignant like an Old Testament Prophet," Rob grumbled, but, to pacify his line mate, he took a deep breath and found that he felt a little less of a burning desire to disembowel Herb Brooks. "Don't you want to yell, curse, or complain, too, Mark? I mean, I know you get angry and frustrated. I can see it in your eyes whenever that happens."

"Losing my temper almost always makes things worse, not better, so I might as well just save the energy." Mark shrugged. "Today has been a bad day for both of us, Rob, but eventually it will end. Then we'll have a night to rest and put everything in perspective. After that, the sun will come up again, and we'll have a new day where things will look a lot brighter."

"Will we wake up to discover that this whole day was nothing more than a nightmare, or that Herb has regained his sense of fairness and kicked Harrer off the team?" snorted Rob.

"Probably not," Mark admitted, taking a sip of water.

"Then don't tell me that tomorrow will be better when it will only bring a continuation of today's problems," Rob snapped, and thought that this was the difference between the Badger Bob optimistic approach and the pragmatic Herb Brooks one. Mark Johnson had learned from his father to just grin and bear it when things beyond his control went wrong, while Rob had been taught from over four years of watching Herb on the bench to fight tooth and nail, mouthing off or pressing his lips into a tight line, when the universe refused to conform to the rules of justice. "The only way things will improve is if we solve our biggest issue, the thorny root of all our woes: Harrer's presence."

"Obviously, a solution would be best," agreed Mark, his tone pleasant despite Rob's provocative voice. "Have you come up with one yet?"

"No," Rob snarled, eyes narrowing because he hated confessing his failures even to a close friend. "Maybe I'd be more successful if _someone_ didn't keep distracting me when I'm trying to think."

Taking the hint (if it could even be called that), Mark lapsed into silence, and the disaster that was practice limped on painfully, every second seeming to last an hour, creating new rifts and hurts every minute.


	2. Chapter 2

"_You used to be a friend of mine, but now I understand you've been eating up inside me for some time. Oh, and I know you're gonna get me somewhere along the line."—__**Somewhere Along the Line**__, Billy Joel, 1977. _

Somewhere Along the Line

The disaster that was practice had finally come to an end, and Rob, dressed in his street clothes and bundled in a coat that he hoped would keep out some of the cold Minnesota winter as he trudged back to his dorm, was doing his best to pretend that he couldn't see Tim packing up his bag in the locker next door. When Tim, at last finished shoving his belongings back into his duffel, caught Rob's eye on his way toward the door, Rob contorted his features into a slight smile, reflecting wryly that humans were probably the only species that routinely bared their teeth and pretended that it meant friendship.

"See you, boys," Tim said, as he took his leave, obviously determined to act as if the team were welcoming him with open arms instead of ignoring him as much as possible in the hope that he would vanish in a puff of fog like a magician's illusion.

Most of the boys remained stonily silent in answer to this farewell, but a few voices mumbled back in a dull reflex, "See you."

Then the door had shut behind Tim, and it was time for a locker room conference with the real team about the current crisis. Likely, nothing would be resolved, because, realistically, none of them had any clout when it came to drafting the final roster, but it would be satisfying to collectively vent their spleens.

Rob expected one of their locker room leaders like Rizzo or Buzz to open the informal whining session with some form of an invitation for complaints, so he was surprised when Mike Ramsey, the youngest member of the team, declared tersely, "This is ridiculous."

Hearing this, Rob felt a surge of affection for Rammer swell within him. Rammer, a solid and fierce defenseman, was many things but a whiner was not among them. After he had been drafted as an NHL first round pick (the first American to receive that honor, as all the Minnesota papers had been proud to announce) and had consequently found himself constantly referred to by Brooks as an "eighteen-year-old prima donna," he hadn't called that ridiculous, even though it was. He was more concerned with injustices done to his teammates than the insults inflicted upon himself, and that was probably part of what made him such an effective defenseman.

"Don't worry about it, Rammer." Rizzo put on his most reassuring tone, and Rob knew that the words were intended for the benefit of the team as a whole, not just Rammer. "It'll be all right."

Turning to his cocky teammate from BU for support, Rizzo added, "Right, O.C.?"

"Herb's not gonna do a damn thing, boys," replied Jack, smirking as though he had the key to an exam everyone was tearing their hair out over, and he planned to hand out only infuriatingly unhelpful hints. "He's just messing with our minds."

Rob wanted to point out that Herb never made threats he wouldn't keep if pushed and that the secret to Herb's successful mind games with his teams was that no player—however clever, determined, or talented—ever had a strong enough hand to call his bluff (if he was even bluffing, which could never be treated as a given). However, by reminding himself sternly that people who talked about how defeat could be snatched from the jaws of victory were never popular in the locker room, Rob held his tongue, deciding to let O.C. cling to his precious delusion if it helped him sleep at night.

"Oh, you think so, Jack?" demanded Jim Craig, and Rob thought he should not be shocked that it had been Jim who challenged O.C.'s confident assertion. The position of goalie was primarily a negative one: preventing the puck from going into the net, and having to deal with shrill klaxons and flashing lights every time you failed to do so.

If you were a goalie, like Jim, you could never afford to assume that the enemy speeding down the ice toward you with the puck was going to feint; you always had to be prepared to block the shot if it came. And Herb was the enemy, more so than the Czechs, Swedes, or even the Soviets, at least as far as Rob was concerned. None of the foreign players—even the Soviets—had done him any personal injury. They had just been born in different countries, sometimes with opposing ideologies. It was nothing personal, but with Herb it was, because Herb would always be the first person to question your worth, your courage, your intellect, your will, or your skill in the most painful way possible. Showing Herb he was wrong about them being lazy and stupid was the dearest ambition of many players who had been on Herb's teams over the years, and there was no denying how personal that was.

"Yeah, I do." O.C.'s smug grin did not falter.

"Well," began Jim with the air of a person about to drop an atomic bomb, "we all know that Herb made the Olympic team back in '60."

Actually, Rob had not known this at all, but his sense that admitting ignorance about any topic was embarrassing and his conviction that humiliation should be avoided whenever possible kept him from expressing his surprise at this revelation aloud. Trying to assure himself that he wasn't a complete ignoramus, he reminded himself that he had known that Herb had been on the Olympic team in '64 and '68 as captain. Not that Rob ever thought about that much. In his mind, Herb had been born with a whistle in his mouth, barking at players that they were skating like headless chickens and that they were playing worse every day. Herb, as far as Rob's mental images were concerned, had never played hockey in his own right.

It was difficult to envision Herb as a hockey player when he never opened up to his team about what his own experiences had been like. Except maybe he had done that with Jim, whom he seemed to share a special connection with, because even Herb Brooks could not be completely callous to someone who was living through the aftermath of the worst cruelties of cancer. In the school of hard knocks, cancer gave out the harshest beatings every time, and even Herb wasn't mean enough to want to compete for that title.

"So?" O.C. pressed, and, from the fact that he was attempting a little too much to appear unimpressed with Jim's comment, Rob understood that he, too, had not been aware of Herb's Olympic history in '60.

"So," continued Jim, sharp as a broken bone, "a week before the Games, Coach Riley calls him into his office and sends him home in favor of some new guy Riley had just brought in."

Biting his lip, Rob stared at the floor and counted the tiles, as he had done so many times as a Gopher when Herb began one of his patented locker room diatribes. It was soothing to be able to focus on one thing when his environment was so overwhelming, and it was comforting to have proof that some things in life—like the number of tiles in the locker room floor—did not change overnight.

_Coach Riley should never have sent you home in favor of some new kid, Herb,_ Rob thought, his hands clenching the bench he was sitting on tightly enough that his knuckles became white as ivory. _That wasn't fair, but don't inflict the same heartbreak that you must have endured on one of us. Let the cycle of injustice end with you and stop history from repeating itself, but you won't ever admit that what Coach Riley did was unfair or hurtful, will you? You'll just say that being cheated of a spot on the '60 Olympic team didn't do you any harm and gave you a purpose—a reason to make the team in '64 and '68, and to coach it now—but you'd be lying, because what Coach Riley did to you was unfair, just like what you're doing to us is unjust. _

That—the sheer unfairness of replacing someone who had trained under Herb's harsh regimen for months with Tim at the last minute-was the sticking point, as far as Rob was concerned. One of Herb's redeeming attributes as a coach, apart from his ability to win championships and drag greatness from any player at the most important times, was his fairness. There was no denying that Herb was a jerk to his players, but as long as he was equally unkind to everyone, there was a certain frigid justice to that.

Even the Herbies marathon in Norway, which could only have been orchestrated by someone as misanthropic as Coach Brooks, was fair in a vigilante fashion that wouldn't have been out of place in the Wild West: refuse to work for me during the game and I'll make you work a hundred times harder afterward was from the same justice philosophy as remove my eye and I'll chop off your head. It lacked any regard for proportion and extenuating circumstances—Rob realized this quite clearly since his father was a successful defense attorney—but it was fair in the most primitive sense of the word. Bringing Tim in so late to replace someone who was dedicated to the team Herb had been building for months wasn't just by any definition of the term, and that was probably why it rankled more than anything Herb had ever done.

"What's your point?" O.C.'s piqued question yanked Rob out of his musings, though Rob could tell from the shadow of doubt shading Jack's eyes that the Boston native understood Jim's point as well as he did. Nobody who was smart enough to be admitted to Harvard, even if they were dumb enough to refuse (as Jack was on both counts), could possibly miss it even if they were concussed.

"My point, Jack, is that one week later, Herb is on his couch with his old man, watching his team win the gold medal." Jim's voice, more than a little belligerent, emphasized that he did not appreciate having to explain something that should have been as obvious as the fact that two plus two equaled four. "Come that close and get nothing? He'll do whatever it takes. That's my point."

He'll do whatever it takes. Jim's words, as succinct a description of Herb's coaching as any Rob had ever heard, echoed inside his ears. Nothing would stop Herb from winning and showing the world that he (and America) could be the best.

That was a motivation Rob could comprehend, even if he had been only two when Herb had been robbed of his gold medal. After all, if he, Rob, had watched someone like Tim win an Olympic medal in what should have been his place, he would have hurled his sneaker through the TV. He would have congratulated his former teammates in whatever way he could, but there would be a jealous whisper inside him that asked why their sweat had been rewarded with a medal and his hadn't.

He would never be able to silence that question completely, because he was a competitive perfectionist. Even in Kindergarten, he had smashed his forehead with a crayon if he colored outside the lines (never mind that Miss Jones assured him that the picture was beautiful, because she had to be either lying through her teeth or blinded by the ugly errors) and challenged classmates to cracker eating contests that he had to win during snack time. That was his unrelentingly intense, conscientious personality, and it had only been magnified as he grew.

Only people as driven as him—gifted students, talented athletes, or both-could stand (and, on good days, appreciate) his compulsion to attain perfection in all he did. That meant, early in his life, he had to learn how to be happy, not bitter, when his friends achieved success, even if he failed. He had been forced to value the fact that such competitive friendships spurred him and his buddies to higher heights than they could have reached flying solo. Even someone as disciplined as Rob needed friends who would raise him up to more than he could be, and that was why, by the time he had arrived at the U, he had become something of a friend snob. He would be polite to everybody as his parents would expect, but he only opened up to people who seemed as resilient as himself. Rob McClanahan, as Don Micheletti (who had lockered next to him for four years at the U) had once quipped over a beer, would do anything for a friend, but he wouldn't be friends with just anyone.

Anything for a friend…Would Rob really do that? Would he find a way to get Tim off the team in order to save the spot for another friend? If he did that, he wouldn't be doing anything for Tim, but, if he did not act, he would be letting a friend like Rizzo be cut unfairly.

_There has to be a life lesson in here somewhere_, Rob thought numbly, drumming his fingers against the bench. If this were a Victorian novel such as _Sense and Sensibility_, the theme would probably be that extremes—do anything for someone or whatever it took to win—should be avoided like cholera, but what was life without passion?

An endless procession of Herbies on an Oslo rink had hammered home a truth that Rob had always suspected but never dared to articulate even in the privacy of his own skull: the only fate worse than death was living without purpose. That was why he had so many purposes—long term goals, to-do lists, color-coded schedules, short term goals, a pile of classics on his desk to be read to make his free time educational, and a bucket list that extended from floor to ceiling. Those were his insurance that he would never lose his passion and that the eulogy at his funeral would never be that his death was a tragedy because he had never truly lived.

_I may not know what to do about Tim, but when I do figure it out, I will pursue it doggedly,_ Rob decided, feeling as grimly resigned to his destiny as a kamikaze pilot. _Whatever I do may not be right, but, at least, it will be done for the right reasons: friendship and not jealousy; for others and not for myself. That will make whatever I do understandable if not pardonable. _

"Herb may be prepared to do whatever it takes to win, but I'm ready to do whatever I have to in order to keep this team together," Rob announced, rising and grabbing his duffel bag.

As he drew this line in the sand, he wasn't astonished to discover that most of his teammates uncovered a newfound fascination with their shoelaces or the zippers of their duffels. Clearly, none of them were prepared to stand up with him, and that was the loneliest feeling in the world, because the fight for this team had been all Rob had known since that nightmarish skate in Oslo. Obviously, they didn't fancy his odds of winning a battle with Herb, but they didn't understand that the secret to whatever success he had was simply getting up with a renewed spirit after every fall. It was amazing how much you could win just by refusing to lose.

Maybe his teammates even feared that Herb would kick him off the roster if he fought about the Harrer issue, but Rob was willing to gamble not. There were many reasons Herb could cut him, but he didn't think his stubbornness would be among them.

Rob could still remember, as a freshman, exhausted after completing too many Herbies on top of a Monday of studying and classes, lifting his chin and panting mutinously, "If you think this will break my will, then…"

"Then what, McClanahan?" Herb had snapped, scowling at Rob.

"Then you couldn't be more wrong," Rob had finished firmly despite his quaking knees, because that had been the first time he had dared to challenge his new coach, and Herb's glare was fifty times more intimidating (as if it needed to be made more terrifying) when it was fixed on Rob alone rather than the whole team.

"If I wished to break your will, I would have done so already," Herb had answered, colder than the air in the rink. Then he had blown his whistle to signal the start of another sprint, calling, "Again."

After that, Rob had realized that Herb would never waste the time and energy it took to break the will of a determined player. Instead, he would simply manipulate the player so that the player's will was bent toward accomplishing whatever Herb desired. Herb would never destroy an asset when he could use it, and he could always find a use for a strong-willed player. Rob would never disobey Herb lightly—because he knew it was the understatement of the century to say he would regret that defiance until the Judgment Day—but he could still rebel if it struck him as necessary, and that, he believed, was exactly how Herb wanted his team: disciplined but with an unbridled spirit.

"I'm not asking any of you to die on the Harrer hill with me." Rob snorted dismissively as he crossed over to the door. "Relax. I won't expect any sacrifices from any of you."

"Wait." Mark's quiet command froze Rob's hand on the door knob. "Where are you going?"

Rob could plainly hear the suggestion in Mark's tone that if he was planning on confronting Herb about the Tim issue right now, he should calm down, reconsider, and then stuff a water bottle in his mouth to be safe.

"To put a load of laundry in back at the dorm before all the functioning washers are full." Recognizing that his voice was too clipped, Rob grinned. "Don't worry, Magic. I haven't drawn up my battle plan yet."

"Oh, that's reassuring," observed Mark dryly as Rob finally swung the door open and stepped out into the corridor.

When he rounded the corner, his mood was not improved by the sight of Tim slumped into an upholstered sofa that Rob knew from experience deceptively appeared more comfortable than it was, staring blankly into a vending machine that Rob also knew from experience slammed any purchased snack down the slot with enough velocity to smash it into crumbs.

Under other circumstances, he might have teased Tim about the choice between chips and crackers not being important enough to slouch over, but right now, he wasn't going to deliberately put himself through the ordeal of making small talk with someone he couldn't help but feel was straining the bonds of friendship. He was about to walk past Tim as if the right-winger was no more sentient than a pillow on the divan when Tim said in a voice of exaggerated casualness, "Hey, Rob, you want to go to Stub & Herb's with me tonight?"

Stub & Herb's was Rob's favorite place to eat at the U—where the Gopher hockey team had gotten together for a bite to eat before or after many games—but the thought of sitting in a booth being polite to a person who might cause Herb to cut another good friend from the Olympic roster sounded about as tempting as skinny-dipping in Lake Superior in January.

"I'm afraid that I've got a prior commitment," Rob answered, flashing his best nice-but-not-really North Oaks smile, which was getting a lot of exercise today. Rizzo's meatballs definitely counted as a prior commitment if the alternative was an awkward dinner with an old friend he hadn't figured out how to deal with yet.

"Then I'll take a rain check," Tim plowed on with his invitation, utterly unfazed by Rob's rejection. "Maybe we can grab something to eat another night this week."

"I'm sorry, but I don't think that will be possible." The fake North Oaks smile, still fixed unnaturally on Rob's face, was starting to hurt, but he didn't dare remove it. "I hate to say it, but my schedule is booked for the next three weeks at least."

Tim hesitated for a long moment, cocking his head slightly as he appraised Rob. Then he commented, his tone a cross between the wounded and wrathful, "I thought we were friends."

"We _are_." The words burst out of Rob's lips in an earnest rush. "But—"

"No," interrupted Tim, jaw clenched. "No buts. Friends are supposed to make time for one another when they haven't seen each other for awhile. They aren't supposed to say that their schedule is full for the next three weeks and please leave a message after the beep. They're supposed to make room in their schedules, even if it is during the two hour block that would normally be devoted to organizing the daily planner. Either be my friend, or don't be, but don't waste both our times by lying to my face about being my friend and then acting like you aren't."

"Tim." Rob pressed his mouth together, controlling his temper, and then continued briskly, "I don't think it would be best for either of us if we talked any time soon. I'm not in the best mood, and I might say some hurtful things to you I'd regret once I've had a chance to cool off a bit."

"Oh, you'll talk about me to Johnson, who you've only known for a few months, but you won't to talk to me, your supposed friend for years," Tim scoffed, hovering somewhere between resentment and hysteria. "That's rich. I can hardly breathe for laughing."

"What I said to Mark wasn't—" Rob began, flushing because he was ready to convict himself as a wretched backbiter, but Tim cut him off, which might have been just as well, because Rob didn't know precisely how he was going to finish this statement.

"Wasn't what?" demanded Tim, eyes searing into Rob's. "Wasn't serious? Wasn't how you really felt? Wasn't about me? Don't try those lies on me. Anyone who went through high school wouldn't believe them for a second."

Rob chomped on his lower lip. He understood that when you felt like you didn't fit in for whatever reason, you became a superhuman. You could feel everyone's eyes on you in the locker room, stuck like Velcro. You could feel their stares like the waves of heat cresting from the sidewalk in summer when it was ninety-eight degrees in the shade. You could hear a whisper about you from a mile away, and, even if you couldn't, you didn't need to hear it to know it was about you. You could disappear, even when it still looked like you were standing right there. You could scream, and nobody would hear a noise. You became the mutant who fell into the vat of acid, the Vader who couldn't tear off his mask. You were the person who used to be normal, but that was so long ago, you couldn't even remember what it felt like.

In high school, Rob had thought of his life as a room with no doors and no windows. It was a sumptuous room, sure—a room half the teenagers in his hometown would have given their right arm to enter—but it was also a room from which there really wasn't an escape. Either he was someone he didn't want to be, or he was someone nobody wanted.

He used to stand in front of the mirror in the bathroom he shared with his brothers, trying to see what everyone else was gawking at—he wanted to understand what made their heads turn when he walked past—what it was about him that made him so incredibly different, but he could never tell. The face studying him was always just him.

When he met his own gaze, he could feel the weight of what his entire town thought they saw when they looked at him: a neat, popular, A student who happened to be the crown jewel of the high school hockey team A son of a lawyer who should realize better than most the consequences of straying from the straight-and-narrow. A boy who was supposed to be destined for great things. A young man who should be everything anyone could hope for in a son—because every parent dreamed of their darling being star of a varsity team or an honors student, and nobody imagined their little boy being picked on every day, even though children grew up to that terrible fate all the time.

Rob always tried to act like he could see in himself what everybody else did, because he didn't want to be the Emperor who revealed his own secret—that he was wearing no robes—but when he stared into the bathroom mirror, he noticed what was underneath his raw skin, not the faces a whole town had painted on it. Still, there was always a part of him that wondered if anyone would still like him if he peeled away the skin and admitted the truth: that some mornings it was a challenge to get out of bed and put on someone else's confident grin; that he was standing on air, a fake who told and laughed at all the right jokes, a fraud who had nearly forgotten what it felt like to be _real_, who, when it came down to it, didn't want to remember, because it hurt even more than this charade…

There wasn't any friend to talk to about that type of emotion. If you even doubted your right to be one of the privileged, popular elite, then you didn't belong there. And he couldn't confide in his parents, especially not his dad, either.

_You don't stop being a lawyer just because you step out of the courthouse_, Rob's father used to say often enough that it became a mantra. It was why Dad never drank more than one glass of wine in public; it was why he never yelled or cried even in the privacy of his own home.

A trial was a stupid word, in Rob's opinion, considering that an attempt was never good enough, especially not in North Oaks: you were supposed to toe the line, period. In a suburb the size of North Oaks, everyone knew everybody else, and always had. Sometimes, that was comforting—like a giant extended family that you sometimes loved and sometimes fell out of favor with. At other times, it was purely stifling.

Many of the achievements Dad was so proud of—Rob's grades and awards—hadn't been accomplished because Rob wanted them so desperately for himself, but mostly because he was afraid of falling short of perfection and disappointing everyone who claimed to love him for himself and not his achievements.

_Ask a random high school or college kid on the street today, _Rob thought, _if he wants to be popular, and he'll roll his eyes, telling you "no," although the truth almost always is that, if he were stranded in a desert dying of thirst and had the choice between a glass of ice water and instant popularity, he'd probably pick the latter every time. See, you can't admit to wanting popularity, because that makes you less cool. To be truly popular, it has to look like it's something you __**are**__, when, in reality, it's what you __**make**__ yourself. _

Rob often wondered if anyone worked harder at anything than young people did at being popular. Even air traffic controllers and President Carter took vacations (however undeserved in the case of the latter), but an average high school or college student was putting in twenty-four hours of solid effort a day for the entire year.

Everybody wanted to know how to crack the inner sanctum of popularity, and Rob believed he had found the key his freshman year of high school when he realized that it was not up to him. It was what everyone else thought of the sports he played, the classes he took, the clothes he wore, the music he listened to, the peers he hung out with, the food he ate in the cafeteria, the books he read on the bus, and the hobbies he pursued in his free time that was important. After that revelation, the only question that remained was, if everybody else's opinion was what mattered, was he ever really able to have one of his own? If he spent his life concentrating on what everyone else thought of him, would he forget who he really was? What if the face he showed to the world turned out to have nothing beneath it?

Shaking his head to clear it, because he couldn't afford distractions in a conversation as crucial as this, Rob reiterated, "I'm not ready to talk to you now, Tim."

"When will you be?" Tim folded his arms and arched an eyebrow.

"I don't know," Rob mumbled, thinking that the word "never" sprang to mind, but aware that was not a fair answer.

"We can't put this conversation off forever, Mac." Tim spread his palms in appeal. "The longer we procrastinate, the worse it will be. I'd rather you shout at me than give me the cold shoulder all the time."

Recognizing that a mature person did address problems with a friend directly instead of complaining and plotting behind the friend's back, Rob sighed and agreed grimly, "I'll meet you at Stub & Herb's in half an hour, all right? I just want to drop my bags off at my room and put in a load of laundry."

"Fine." Tim nodded as Rob hurried off down the hallway. "Just don't stand me up."

"It's a date," Rob tossed over his shoulder, giving a ghost of a grin.

_I do want to talk to you, Tim_, he thought as he exited the rink and headed across the campus to his dorm. _I want to talk to you, but I don't have the slightest idea what we would have to say. I have questions for you I'll never have the courage to ask: How did Herb ask you to come to practice, and why did you ever say yes? If we kept playing together, would we ever recapture the chemistry of our glory days during the '79 playoffs? Do you ever think of those successes when you least expect it—when you're watching the news or tilting your face up to the shower nozzle? And can you leave it at that, or do you find yourself compulsively sifting through the memories? If I had been the one to butt into an Olympic team you had connected with, would you have screamed your heart out at me or given me the cold shoulder? _

Rob had reached his dorm room by now. He fumbled in his jeans pocket for a moment, and then pulled out his key. Once he had pushed open the door, he dumped his duffel on his bed, which could have passed muster under the most finicky inspecting general in the Marines, and snatched his hamper out of the closet.

After dumping the load into the washer in the laundry room that looked least likely to explode under the pressure and paying far too many coins for the services of a machine that had probably not functioned optimally since the Truman administration, Rob left the dormitory and made his way over to Stub & Herb's to meet Tim.

As he strode through the haze of slowly falling snowflakes, Rob tried to prepare himself for his next meeting with Tim, imagining what it would be like. He could smell the flour on the rolls and the starch of the white napkins. He could see Tim's easy smile, which always seemed to startle its way across his face and that he hoped he would glimpse at least once during their probably heated, impending discussion, and he could hear Tim's fingers tapping a light tattoo against a glass of Coca-Cola.

Rob couldn't give either of them any dialogue: no "You looked great on the ice today"; no "What have you been up to?"; no "It has been hell, these past few months of training, and you don't really want to join in the misery fest." Like what exactly Rob was going to do about Tim's presence, this part of their conversation—what they would actually say to one another—had not come into focus yet. At the moment, he was still not sure if he should welcome back from exile a teammate who had once been the other half of him on ice and, if he should, whether there was a protocol to be followed when he did so.

He entered Stub & Herb's and found his ears immediately assaulted with "Joy to the World" trilling from the radio. Since he could not imagine being happy right now, Rob perceived this holiday song as little more than mockery.

Catching sight of Tim seated at a table near the window, Rob went over to join him.

"Hi," Rob muttered, directing his greeting more toward the stuffed Santa perched between the salt and pepper shakers than toward his former teammate.

"Hello," replied Tim. "Got your laundry in now?"

"Yeah." Rob nodded and was spared the awkwardness of coming up with a new plane on which to continue the exchange by the timely arrival of Patricia—Tricia—Spinner, a senior at the U who was always busy working shifts as a waitress or the person who scanned books for checkout at the library. Rob and Tricia did not meet often enough to cross the line from acquaintance into friend, but he had always respected her work ethic and tried to tip her generously when she was his server.

Wanting to earn some cash and independence the summer before his freshman year of high school, Rob had gotten his first job as a waiter at a country club. He still recalled how hard he could work to make a customer happy only to be cheated of a decent tip because the prickly consumer blamed him for the kitchen putting too much Caesar in their salad. Then, because he always had to claim a tip on his taxes even if he had gotten none, he made negative money on a table.

It was infuriating and made him entertain fantasies of an asteroid slamming into D.C., although, even if that happened, taxpayers would probably still be required to annually dump tractor trailer loads of money into the steaming crater. Heck, citizens would probably be forced to give more than ever of their hard-earned cash to the federal government, because the politicians would be bleating about how awful it was that their job had gotten blown up…So, in Rob's experience, it was better to tip generously so that somebody else could fund the nation's massive and unnecessary highway projects. 

"Hey, Rob and Tim." Tricia gave her waitress grin, her pen poised over her pad to record their orders. "What can I get you boys?"

"A Coke, a cheeseburger, and a small serving of fries, please," answered Tim.

"Very good." Tricia made a note of this and then looked at Rob. "How about you?"

"The usual, please," Rob said, knowing this marked him as a boring creature of habit and not particularly caring.

"A Reuben, potato chips, and lemonade coming right up." Tricia smiled again and then disappeared to deliver their order to the kitchen.

"Why don't you say something because I know that you're itching to?" suggested Tim, eyeing Rob pointedly as soon as they were alone again. "Neither of us like wasting time."

"What do you want me to say?" Rob hissed, looking around the restaurant with its chatting university students eager to finish finals and go home for Christmas, and observing inwardly that this wasn't the place for a confrontation, which was probably why Tim had picked it.

"Whatever you're thinking." Tim shrugged. "Honesty is the only way the tension between us is going to break. Say what you're thinking instead of letting it hang in the air for a thousand years."

"Fine." Rob leaned forward and went on in a ferocious whisper, "Then I want to thank you for totally ruining everything for this Olympic team. All we worked on since the summer you went and flushed down the drain, which is just so considerate of you."

"The Mac Attack of Sarcasm." Tim grimaced. "Well, I knew it was coming, and I did ask for it, so I can deal."

"You'd better be able to deal with this and more." Needing to do something to occupy his hands before he punched Tim or upended a chair, Rob grabbed a napkin from the dispenser and folded it on his lap with a dignity that wouldn't be out of place at a state dinner. "I mean, did you think this was going to be a walk through the park on a spring day?"

Tim was quiet for a moment as Tricia arrived with their meals. When the dishes had been set before them, they had thanked her for dropping off their food, and she had gone off to help a gaggle of giggling sorority girls, Tim confessed, "I thought that Herb, not you guys, would be the one making my life difficult. Robbie, please believe me when I say that I never begged Herb to bring me in. He was the one who approached me, and he didn't ask me to come so much as he told me to."

"I do believe you," Rob remarked shortly between bites of his sandwich, because Tim, squirting ketchup on his burger and fries, looked so pathetic and lost. "When Herb had a spot he needed filled on the National Team this summer, Phil Verchota says Herb just dialed him up and informed him he was going to Europe to play hockey. Phil reckons that it was because Herb knew he had a passport, but the point is Herb just orders his players to come join his team, and it never occurs to him that they might not want to do that."

"Well, I never could refuse Herb when he came calling for me." Tim sighed, shook his head, and took a big bite out of his cheeseburger.

"I know." Rob sipped his lemonade, remembering how Tim had told him that he had accepted Herb's offer of a place on the team at the U the moment that Herb had called him to make it. There wasn't anything unusual about that. After all, Rammer had done the same thing, reportedly offending Badger Bob, who had wanted Mike Ramsey to play for the University of Wisconsin and who had informed Rammer in no uncertain terms that agreeing to play for one university without looking at any others was the equivalent of buying the first car you saw. "I'm not much different in that way. Sure, I made noises about going to Michigan Tech after high school, but where did I end up? That's right, at the U like a stereotypical Minnesota hockey player. What an exciting and unexpected life I lead."

And Rob knew exactly how he had ended up at the U. The coach at Michigan Tech had been too eager-beaver to have Rob on the team, always emphasizing his willingness to re-negotiate terms if Rob felt like he was getting a better deal from somewhere else. That had made Rob wonder how successful the team was actually going to be when the coach, who was supposed to be leading it to NCAA championships, was ready to be pushed around by the whims of a senior in high school.

In contrast, Herb Brooks, whose options were effectively limited to Minnesotans because he couldn't tempt out-of-staters or Canadians with scholarships owing to U administration policies, had made it sound as if he had simply hundreds of other hockey players to take Rob's place if Rob wasn't interested. A man who could make you believe that he could do anything when his hands were pretty much tied behind his back convinced you that he was going to be successful, making you want to come along for the ride, however bumpy it turned out to be.

"Look." Tim scraped a fry through a mound of ketchup and plopped it into his mouth. "I didn't think that Herb would be this weird when I came to practice today. I never imagined that he would throw me a party for not doing much of anything and roast your ears for scoring. That's not how I pictured it at all."

"Then how did you picture it?" Rob snapped, biting into a potato chip with a satisfying crunch. "Was the whole team supposed to throw you a welcoming parade along with Herb?"

"Rob." Another fry made its way into Tim's mouth as he paused and then pleaded, "I just pictured myself being on a team with a lot of my old friends—like you, Baker, Verchota, Christoff, and Janny—and maybe even representing my country in the Olympics. It would take a stronger person than me to resist an offer like that. I realize you're mad, but just try to see this from my perspective, and understand that I'm not trying to hurt anyone here."

"No," countered Rob icily. "You need to look at things from our perspective, Tim, since we were here before you. Your presence at practice means that any of us could be kicked off the team at any time in favor of some new kid, and you can't expect us to be happy about the fact that a place on the roster we worked hard to earn for months is more uncertain than ever. This is a team that died and was reborn together on the ice, and you expect to be taken seamlessly into the fold at the last minute. That's crazy."

"I think that you're being melodramatic." There was a steely glint in Tim's eyes now as he gulped down his soda. "You don't look too much like a ghost to me, so you'll have to forgive me for not believing you when you claim to have died."

"Maybe you should know what you're talking about before you pass judgment." Rob glared at Tim. "Do you remember Monday and Tuesday practices with Herb?"

"Of course. I'll remember them well into senility." Tim snorted into his glass, so that condensation developed around the rim. "Every week, he said that we'd had the whole weekend to laze about, so he made us do a dozen Herbies to get us back into shape. It was torture, and I never enjoyed a moment of those practices, that's for certain."

"Yeah, and how would you like to do a Monday and Tuesday combined amount of Herbies after playing a game, practicing before the game, and getting off a plane in a foreign country with jet lag? That's what happened to us in Norway, and, believe me, it should never have been done to anyone," hissed Rob, thinking that he would never be entirely over what had happened to him in that Oslo arena, probably because part of him would never believe that torment had truly ended. His lungs would never forget what it was like to seize up in his chest, making his abdomen ache in sympathy. His muscles would never forget what it was like to not be able to support him. His brain would never forget what it was like to barely be able to force himself to skate another inch.

For the first time, he had recognized how frail his life was—at any second his heart, exhausted, could stop pumping, or his lungs, sagging from a perpetual lack of oxygen, could collapse in his rib cage, never to work again. Every breath and heartbeat was a miracle, so only so many of them could be strung together like beads on the necklace of his life before the strand snapped under the pressure and his life ended. The knowledge that he was going to die sooner or later had made Rob latch onto something eternal—not God or religion, but the 1980 US Olympic Hockey Team. He needed to be a part of something larger than himself that would endure after the last breath had sailed from his chest. When he had been brought to his knees, trying to cool his burning body against the ice between sprints in an endless procession of Herbies, he had finally been rid of himself enough to truly belong to a team.

He had at last been willing to lay himself completely down for something much more spectacular than himself. There had been a certain fanatic exhilaration in that which allowed him to begin to understand how religious devotees found euphoria in fasting or self-flagellation. After a breaking point, agony became pleasure if it freed you from worrying about your wretched body—which would always hurt and was already dead—and let you focus, even for an eye blink, on the eternal instead of the ephemeral.

Now that Rob had connected to that everlasting team, he wasn't going to let Herb tear it apart, because that would mean admitting that the eternal thing he had latched onto was as weak and transient as he was. That would never do, because it had been the team that had kept Rob alive when all he wanted to do was let himself be killed on that rink in Oslo. Intellectually, he had known that his family and friends back home would miss him if he died a thousand miles away from them, but they had seemed so distant to him—like people who inhabited another world he could never be a part of—and he could tell himself that they would find some solace in the fact that his suffering was finally at an end.

However, while he was weak enough to justify abandoning his family and friends, he had not been cowardly enough to leave his team. He had known that dying, to Herb, would represent the ultimate form of quitting, and if Rob quit, Herb would punish the entire team for his lack of resiliency. No matter how many Herbies he had to do, Rob would have to stay alive for his team, which remained a solid mass of wheezing and vomiting that he could not disregard in his distress like his friends and family back home.

As a result, as far as he was concerned, Rob McClanahan owed a life debt to everyone who had skated beside him in Norway. Every one of them, even Jack O'Callahan, had kept him alive when he was ready to give up and die. Now Rob would defend any one of them to the death, because they had been a part of the team that had been his only purpose for living through the Herbies marathon in Oslo.

That was the truth about pain: it was like chicken soup for the soul that didn't even realize it was sick. The fact was that Rob was a better teammate because of the Herbies in Norway. If every cloud had a silver lining, that one was admittedly pretty gray. That didn't mean that the Herbies were worth it, that they were an even trade for the innocence that he had lost, or that he would have chosen to do them knowing that they would unite him more deeply with a team than he could imagine if he had been told how much they would cost him, but he did know that he was a better person than he used to be. He had a finer sense of what was important. He had a keener understanding of other people's pain.

Rob wished that he could tell Tim that, through the endless Herbies, he had mined some undiscovered, life-altering absolute that he could pass along, but he hadn't. The clichés applied—people are what count, life is precious, always have a purpose, live in the moment, and the little things matter—and he could have repeated them ad nauseam. Tim might even have been courteous enough to listen, but he wouldn't internalize. Pain hammered those lessons home, etched them into the soul. Pain wouldn't make you happier, but it would make you better. Herb Brooks was a great teacher, even if he was too harsh.

That was why, when it came to an extra cut being made from the team, Rob was not going to accept any "better to have loved and lost" rubbish. He knew it was not better. He didn't want to be shown paradise only to have to watch it get burned down. That was the selfish part of his rage at Tim's presence at practice. The noble part—the part that sliced deepest into his heart—was that Rizzo, who sacrificed so much without a complaint, might be denied everything.

Rob had understood that the moment Tim had shown up in the rink to practice with the Olympic team. He recognized that he might never play with Rizzo again, or laugh with him, or tease him about his meatballs. He understood that a cut was final, that there was no reprieve (especially not with a coach as pitiless as Herb Brooks), and that nothing could be bartered or negotiated once Herb had made up his mind. But Rob was going to fight tooth and nail anyway. The battle might be lost already, but that was not going to stop him from waging it passionately.

"I'm sorry." Swallowing, Tim did indeed look appropriately contrite. "I do understand why you hate me and don't want me here now."

"I don't hate you." Rob shook his head. "I can't even judge you too harshly, because, if I were in shoes, I would have come too, Tim. I would have thought that there was nothing wrong with using an old contact to my advantage. If some guy I didn't know drew the short stick and didn't make the team because Herb had brought me in at the last minute, I would have just said that it was tough cookies for that fellow who should have played better."

"So, we're still friends despite everything?" Tim asked, looking like a dog hopeful of getting a pat on the head after receiving a stern reprimand

"Yes," Rob agreed softly. "Despite everything, we're still friends."

But, Rob knew with a sinking feeling in his gut, that wouldn't prevent him from doing everything in his power to defend Rizzo's spot on the roster, and, consequently, to undermine Tim's presence on the team. Taking a long drink of his lemonade, Rob thought, _Nobody wants to admit this, but bad things will keep on happening to good people, and most of the time it will be other good people who do the damage. Maybe that's because it's all a chain, and a long time ago someone did the first bad thing, and that led somebody else to do the next bad thing, and so on, like the game Telephone, where you whisper a sentence into someone's ear, and that person whispers it to somebody else, and it all comes out jumbled (and wrong) in the end. But then again, perhaps bad things happen because it's the only way we can keep remembering what good is supposed to look like in this messed up world. _


	3. Chapter 3

"_It's those changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes. Nothing remains quite the same. With all of our running and all of our cunning, if we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane."—__**Jimmy Buffet**__, 1977._

All Go Insane

"Another practice with Harrer," muttered Mark to Rob the next morning as the team finished stretching and skated into a circle to watch Herb outline a drill on the glass.

"Maybe he won't be on our line today," Rob whispered back, watching Herb sketch rectangular goal posts and crosses representing players on the glass with a black marker. He was hopeful because Herb hadn't specifically told Harrer he was on Johnson's line today, and yesterday the line's performance had been rather lackluster. Rob still remembered his shot that had skidded several inches wide of the left goal post with considerable chagrin. Surely Herb would see the folly of continuing a test that had obviously already been failed. "We weren't exactly anything to phone home about yesterday, so perhaps Strobel or Silk will play with us today."

"Or maybe there will be a fire drill," murmured Mark, eyes mischievous, although he had to be aware that Herb would never pause practice for anything as mundane as a fire drill. The roof could go up in flames, and the team would have to keep skating until the ice melted.

"A plague of locusts," Rob suggested, forgetting to listen to the drill Herb was explaining or look at the accompanying arrows flitting across the diagram like moths.

"A monsoon," said Mark in a hushed voice, clearly determined not to be outdone in this absurdity contest.

"Yes, because this is Bombay." Rob rolled his eyes. "You can tell by everything from the architecture to the weather patterns."

At this, Mark was unable to restrain a smile, and, seeing his line mate's grin, Rob could no more prevent himself from beaming than the sun could mind shining.

"Johnson! McClanahan!" Herb snapped, sharply enough to wipe the smile off a mannequin's face, and Rob knew that his and Mark's levity had not been missed by their eagle-eyed coach. "Something funny about the drill I'm outlining?"

Rob experienced a second's temptation to point out that it was rather amusing that none of the players Herb had drawn resembled people, so it was just as well that Mark, speaking for the pair of them, answered, tone flat as old Coca-Cola and face smooth as fresh snow, "No, Coach, nothing at all."

"Something amused you two." Herb tapped his marker against the glass. "That much is plain. If it's not about the drill, what the hell is important enough to disrupt my practice over?"

"Sorry, Coach. Mark and I just couldn't contain our excitement about the drill." Rob was smiling again—his slight, crafty one that demonstrated his confidence in his ability to create and get out of trouble. "It's our new favorite, you see."

"Then remind us what exactly is done during your new favorite drill," ordered Herb crisply, arching an eyebrow.

Stifling a groan at this insistence on proof that he and Mark had been paying attention while the drill was outlined, Rob decided to stall for time in which to figure out what the flurry of arrows on the diagram indicated by asking, "Should I assume Harrer is right-winger on my line?"

At the mention of Harrer's name, the tension in the rink ratcheted up several notches. Most of the boys on the team swapped significant glances that expressed more than a thousand words with their neighbors, while Tim took a sudden, intense interest in his skate blades. Taking advantage of this immediate, strong reaction to his question, Rob craned his neck so that he could see Herb's diagram more clearly over the heads of Verchota and Baker.

"You may assume the right-winger is Harrer." Herb nodded tersely, as the team's eyes fixed on him again. "Go on with your explanation."

"The left-winger, me, breaks out of the defensive zone with the puck and travels toward the center. The right-winger, Harrer, falls back to provide cover as I pass to the center, Mark. Mark skates in front of the net, then passes to Harrer, who moves out from behind Mark to shoot." Aware that all eyes were on him now and unable to resist the opportunity to protest Harrer's presence, Rob added in a would-be offhanded tone, "Then, hopefully, Harrer scores, but, if he doesn't, that's no big deal, because you can just replace him with anyone you think can do the job better."

The rink went so silent that Rob was convinced everyone was too scared to attract attention by breathing or even letting their hearts beat. Part of him longed to smash his stick against the ice just to crack the unnatural quiet, but he understood that would be going too far—assuming, of course, that his last remark hadn't already crossed the line of what sass Herb would tolerate from a player at this hour of the morning.

If his mother could have heard his final sardonic assertion, she would have shaken her head and sighed, "Your sarcastic attitude isn't healthy for you, dear." Not healthy, she always commented, as if her son's irony were a gigantic, sticky chocolate bar instead of a vitamin-infused green pepper. Of course, he wasn't in a position to argue with this claim, since his sarcastic tongue was probably about to land him up to his ears in manure for what had to be the millionth time in his unspectacular existence.

"For your sake, McClanahan, I hope you're not criticizing my coaching choices." Herb folded his arms across his chest in a gesture that Rob recognized as a very bad, very menacing sign.

"On the contrary." Rob could feel, between his shoulders, the weight of his entire team staring at first him, then Herb, following their exchange as though it were a rapid tennis rally, and waiting for Rob to whack the ball back to Herb's side of the net. "I was expressing my unfading faith in them."

_With my tongue firmly planted in cheek, of course_, he concluded mentally.

"And it would be nice if I could have any faith in the abilities of my players." Herb glared around the circle, seeking a scapegoat, and when he found one, he snarled, "Rizzo, your line is up. Time for you to shoot like you've picked up a stick before."

As they drifted toward the bench along with the rest of the players who were not about to perform the drill, Mark nudged Rob in the ribs, hissing, "Are you insane, suicidal, or just plain stupid, Mac? As your line mate, I really want to know."

"The correct answer is D: none of the above," responded Rob as he climbed off the ice and onto the bench. "I'm just obnoxiously sarcastic, which means if there is any chance that my tongue-in-cheek comments might make a situation worse, I just have to take it. Like hockey, that's in my blood."

"You're right about the obnoxious and making situations worse parts." Mark gave a long-suffering sigh. "How you just mouthed off to Herb is evidence enough to convict you on both counts."

"Just trying to have some fun." All innocence, Rob shrugged. "Turn that frown upside down, Mr. Storm Cloud."

"I know fun, because Dad always makes sure that we have some of it when we practice at the University of Wisconsin, and I hate to break it to you, but what you did wasn't fun." Making it apparent he thought Rob was either crazy or dumb, Mark shook his head. "It was terrifying."

"Terrifying _is _fun," observed Rob, studying Mark as if the center had just been caught picking his nose with the dessert fork at a fancy restaurant. "That's the whole premise behind haunted houses, Halloween, roller coasters, and the horror movie industry. You're _so _uncultured, Magic."

"If I were a less tolerant line mate, I'd punch you in the nose right about now." Mark treated Rob to his most withering glance.

"Have pity on me." Rob chuckled, utterly unabashed at driving mild-mannered Mark Johnson to threats of violence. "At the U, the most fun we ever had during hockey practice was complaining about all the fun we _weren't _having. Remember that, to Herb, terrifying really is fun. I'd call him a sadist, but he doesn't seem to get pleasure from anything—even our pain."

"Well, if you ever actually want to have fun," commented Mark wryly, "my tip would be that you don't say anything to tempt Herb to bash your little brain out with his hockey stick."

"You're more of an expert at taking the fun out of everything than on having fun." Rob snorted. "I see no more reason to listen to your advice about how to have fun than to take the Ayatollah in Iran's about justice and peace."

Before Mark could offer a rejoinder, everybody's attention was seized by Herb's shrill whistle blow and barked, "Come on, Rizzo!"

Rob winced, understanding Herb's impatient shout meant Rizzo's shot had sailed wide of the net again.

"I know, Coach," panted Rizzo, as Herb skated over to reprimand him. "I know."

"You know?" Herb scoffed, at his most derisive, and Rob bit his lip, wishing that he could give some of his goals to Rizzo. "If you knew, then why did you do it again?"

There was no good, safe answer to this question, but, luckily, Herb didn't seem to expect one, as he went on stridently, "You better start putting the puck in the net, Rizzo, or you're not going anywhere."

Rob ached to scream that Harrer was not going to go anywhere if Rizzo—who always worked hard and gave everything to the team, which he was an important part of, whatever Herb might have believed on the contrary—had to stay behind, and, if Herb thought otherwise, he couldn't be more wrong. However, reminding himself that he had already tried Herb's temper enough for one morning and biting his lip hard enough to draw blood, Rob remained silent, as Herb, skating away from Rizzo, tossed over his shoulder, "Don't think I won't do it."

_Don't worry,_ Rob thought bitterly. _We all know that you're the type of merciless maniac who would deny his own mother a glass of water if she were dying of thirst if you believed doing so would help this team win an Olympic medal. We'd expect compassion from the Ayatollah before you. _

Rob was so busy drowning in resentment that he did not hear Herb's shout for Johnson's line to do the drill next. He needed Mark's elbow in the ribs and hissed, "Come on-we're up," to pull him out of his angry musings enough to clamber over the rail onto the ice.

Unlike yesterday, when Rob and Mark skated with Tim, there were no issues of undershooting or overshooting during passes, and, when Tim fired his shot at the goal, it did not sail wide of the post, but landed squarely in the net a millisecond before Jim's pad could deflect it.

Seeing this, Rob bit his lip. After Rizzo's bungled shot, there could not have been a worse time for Tim to score. Perhaps he and Mark should have tried to sabotage Tim's chances of scoring by intentionally messing up their passes. That would have earned them Herb's ire, but it would also have spared Rizzo the shame of being immediately outshone by Tim with all the attendant risk of being kicked off the Olympic team in favor of the sharp-shooting newcomer. That was a trade that Rob was willing to make, and he thought that Mark would be, too. If only it had occurred to him before he opened the drill with his pass to Mark, but the call for Johnson's line to perform the drill had come so soon after Herb chewed Rizzo out for the shot that went wide of the posts that there had been no time to plot…

"Excellent goal, Timmy." Herb glided over to pat Tim on the back as enthusiastically as if the right-winger had just received a Nobel prize. "You have great vision and a wonderful grip on the stick. That's the way people who want to go somewhere score. Keep up the good work—this is exactly what I want to see from you."

_If Tim's such an awesome shot, maybe he can do me a favor and kill me now_, Rob groaned inwardly as he returned to the bench with Mark and Tim.

Once Tim had squeezed into a spot between Rammer and Neal Broten, Rob suggested to Mark in a voice barely above a whisper, "If our line goes up after Rizzo again, we have to do whatever we can—messing up passes or whatever—to prevent Tim from scoring. We don't want Tim making Rizzo look bad."

"I know." Mark sighed. "But your plan won't work, Mac. Herb will see what we're doing, so we'll end up making ourselves, not Tim, look bad, and we won't be helping Rizzo at all."

"Well, if you don't want to fight against Tim taking Rizzo's place, just say so." In a huff, Rob folded his arms across his chest. "I can do it by myself, if I have to."

"I'm not saying that I won't fight against Tim taking Rizzo's place." Gaze earnest, Mark shook his head. "All I'm saying is that playing poorly in an attempt to sabotage Tim's chances of scoring is not the way to win that war."

"Then I'll come up with another way." Defiantly, Rob lifted his chin. "I'm nowhere near ready to admit defeat."

Hours later, when practice ended, Rob was still trying to devise such a strategy. After changing in the locker room, he headed back to his dormitory, stopping by at the student center on his path to the dorm to check his mailbox.

When he entered, the student center was jammed with students lounging around on sofas and tables, guzzling coffee and cramming—individually or in small study groups—for finals. Holly hung from the doors and windows, and an evergreen, strung with ornaments and white lights, glistened in a corner.

Glad that he, at least, did not have the stress of exams to contend with (and would probably never have to take another final in his life, unless he one day chose to attend grad school), Rob strode down the hallway containing student mailboxes until he reached his number. Upon unlocking his mailbox, he found a green envelope and a cardboard package stuffed inside.

Slitting open the envelope as he left the teeming student center, Rob withdrew the reindeer-fringed paper inside to read: _V. George and Velta Nagobads request the pleasure of your company at a Christmas party on December 25__th__ at noon at their home. RSVP by December 23__rd._

His forehead furrowing, Rob stared down at the note. Doc had invited him to a Christmas party on December 25th of all days. The old man must finally be losing his marbles after too many years of patching up ungrateful college hockey players. Christmas parties were supposed to take place during the days leading up to Christmas with the actual holiday being reserved for unwrapping presents with family and gathering around the tree for some eggnog and caroling.

At any rate, that was certainly what Rob had planned to do for Christmas, but, suddenly, it occurred to him that, while he could go home to celebrate the holiday with his family, all the boys on the team who were not from Minnesota would not be able to do that. They would be stuck in a dorm with walls painted the color of ooze trickling out of an untreated wound, trying not to think about the fact that they were hundreds of miles away from their parents and siblings. That was why Doc, who still had a keener understanding of reality than most people a quarter his age, had invited them to crash at his house. Nothing would be lonelier than celebrating Christmas without a family, knowing that, around the globe, people were laughing and watching holiday specials with their loved ones in beautifully decorated living rooms.

It wouldn't be fair for Rob to spend Christmas with his family instead of his teammates when some of them would be lonesome for their own kin. None of the out-of-staters would ever have been selfish enough to insist that he stay with them for Christmas instead of with his own family, but solidarity meant everyone on the team shared a Christmas without their families and created happy memories together rather than lonely ones apart.

He would miss his parents and brothers on Christmas day, Rob concluded, but he had already had so many Christmases with them, and he would, barring a tragedy, have many more. However, this would be his only chance to enjoy Christmas with the 1980 US Olympic Team—the team he had bonded so closely with that every other player felt like a part of him—and he would have to take it, or regret not doing so for a very long time.

He could only hope, as he walked up the steps of his dormitory and down the hall to the room he shared with Mark, that his parents would understand his need to keep his out-of-state teammates company and not react too unpleasantly to the news that he wouldn't be coming home for Christmas, after all. At least he hadn't exactly promised Mom and Dad that he would be in the living room with them on the 25th, singing along to every carol the radio played…Then he would feel even more guilty about abandoning his family on Christmas than he did right now.

Arriving at his door and noticing that it was ajar, Rob pushed his way inside, shutting the door behind him. As he entered, he saw Mark, curled on his bed, twisting the phone cord around his fingers, and saying impatiently into the receiver, "I already tried that, Dad. It didn't work."

Intent on blocking out as much of this private phone conversation as possible, Rob dumped his package on his bed. He glanced at the return address and was not surprised to discover that it was his home address written in his mother's flowing, tidy cursive. Ripping open the box, Rob wasn't astonished to discover that it was bursting with Christmas cookies—gingerbread men and sugar cookies cut into snowflakes and candy canes—that his mother always mailed to him around finals time to keep his energy from flagging.

As Rob transferred the cookies into a Tupperware (because if the room got infested with bugs, it was not going to be his fault for not sealing food properly), he tried to pretend that he couldn't hear his roommate's phone call coming to a close, as Mark said, his voice growing more impatient with every sentence, "No, Dad, of course I didn't mean that the way it came out…Look, I've got to go now…There are other things I need to do…When I said I had to go, I _meant _it, Dad…Okay. Good-bye. Love you too."

Then Mark came the nearest Rob had ever seen him to slamming the phone back into the cradle, groaning, "Shit."

Rob gaped at his roommate. Mark Johnson cursed about as often as he boasted, which was a roundabout way of saying never. In all the months they had known one another, Rob had not heard Mark utter a single profanity or brag once. He was unfailingly humble and calm, which was why Rob reacted more strongly to Mark's relatively mild curse than he would have to a string of f-words dropped by one of his dirtier-mouthed friends. If Mark cursed, it would be because he was very frustrated, not because it was his habit or he thought it made him look cool and tough.

"What?" Rob asked, because he couldn't think of anything else to say. Part of him wanted to march across the room and cover Mark's ears like a protective parent since there was something so innocent about Mark that Rob didn't want spoiled, especially by foul language from Mark's own mouth.

"I'm feeling great frustration and confusion" Mark massaged his temples. "And I would have felt like a fool saying that as I hung up the phone, so I just took a shortcut and said the s-word, even though I was in no way thinking of the substance the s-word literally describes."

"Oddly enough, I figured out that much for myself, thanks," commented Rob dryly. Then he gave the sympathetic smile he offered whenever he wished to assure a friend that it was safe to confide in him. He enjoyed goading his friends, since a friendship without a competitive edge was no fun and improved nobody's game, but, when they were going through a rough patch, he would be the first one to try to cheer them up with a joke that wouldn't be at their expense or a supportive remark. He regarded it as his prerogative to tease him friends, but if anyone else dared to insult somebody close to him, he would make that person regret it until the Berlin Wall fell. "I was more wondering why you felt, to use your phrase, great frustration and confusion."

"I'm a terrible son." Mark's hands traveled upward to tug at his hair. "I'm not worthy to be called Bob Johnson's boy, because I don't show him enough respect."

"You're worthy of a cookie at the very least." Deciding that Mark needed something to occupy his hands before he made himself temporarily bald, Rob tossed a gingerbread man onto his roommate's bed.

For a few seconds, Mark studied the cookie blankly, as if he had never encountered a dessert before. Once he had finally picked it up and taken a nibble out of its head, Rob continued sternly, "Hey, Mark, don't you go around telling nasty lies like that about my friend."

"It's not lies." Mark shook his head and tore an arm off the gingerbread man. "It's the truth."

"The truth is that you're a good person—one of those rare beings who always, without even realizing he's doing it, brings out the best in others on and off the ice," Rob corrected, and, although he wanted to sound stern, he found his voice cracking as if he were going through the agony of puberty again or were trying to speak through a mouthful of gravel. One of the worst ironies of the social world was that it was easier for the tongue to hurt a friend than to express affection for a friend. That was one lesson the Harrer affair was teaching him quite effectively. "That makes you the sort of son any father would be proud to call his. Parents are ashamed when their little boys grow up to be serial killers, not Olympic hockey players."

"Being an Olympic hockey player doesn't make me automatically a good son," replied Mark, chewing on his lip instead of his cookie. "Being respectful does, and I was rude to Dad when he was just trying to give me some advice I should have been grateful to get. Then I just rushed him off the phone although I had plenty of time to talk to him, and I don't know why I did. I mean, yes, it gets annoying when he repeats the same thing ten times in a row as if it were a completely new idea, but I'm his son, and I should listen patiently."

"What did you need advice about?" Rob's forehead furrowed in concern.

"Harrer." Mark sighed. "I don't know how to deal with our new addition to the team, and all Dad could tell me was to try to find a way to turn a negative into a positive—to draw some good out of a bad experience."

Mark closed his eyes, as if to trap his guilt behind his lids, and went on in a whisper, "But I already knew I was supposed to do that, so I sassed him, saying I'd already tried that and it didn't work. Maybe I took my failure out on him, but I just can't see the blessing that suffering Harrer's presence is going to provide our team, and that drives me crazy, Robbie."

"We're going to rally around one another more fiercely than ever before. We're going to bind ourselves so tightly together than if Herb dare to cut one more person than he has to in order to bring the roster down to twenty, the whole team will go with that player, and Herb can just find himself a new team if we're all so _replaceable_." Rob lifted his chin in a gesture that promised he would never surrender the fight for this team. "Herb may not be trying to make this team closer than ever, but that's what is going to happen, and that's a good thing."

The team. Those two words had assumed almost godhead status since Norway. You were supposed to give everything—time, sweat, dreams, and personal glory—to the team, and, in return, it was supposed to keep you and never let you go. It carried you when your worst days made you heavy, and you saved it when it was about to die in a game. It revived you after your defeats and made your triumphs meaningful. Without this team, going to the Olympics would be about as special as going to the grocery store to buy more cereal.

"We'll just stick together and try to keep our spirits up. That's all we can do, so it will have to be enough." Coming out of his slump, Mark resumed eating his cookie and added, "Thanks for the cookie, Rob. It's delicious."

"No need to thank me." Rob waved a dismissive hand. "My mom is the one who baked and sent them. All I did was throw one across the room at you, which isn't that difficult.

"I was thanking you for sharing," pointed out Mark, grinning. "It's difficult to share a tasty cookie."

"During the holiday season, I try to avoid looking like Santa stuffing a container of cookies down my throat." Rob smirked, glad to have the untroubled-by-life's-many-jolts Mark Johnson back from vacation. "My sharing my food with you doesn't mean we're friends or anything."

"What a relief." Mark's grin blossomed into a smile, and his eyes shone. "I wouldn't want to have to be nice to you or something."

"Yeah, save the effort for slipping the puck into the net, Magic." Rob chuckled. Then, grabbing his hamper, he added, "I'm going to put in a load of laundry. Try not to overdo the celebration of my absence. Don't want you battling a hangover in tomorrow's game against the IHL stars."

"I thought that you did laundry yesterday," remarked Mark, as Rob carried his hamper toward the door.

"Yesterday I did darks; today I'm going to do lights," Rob explained briskly over his shoulders as he swung open the door and stepped into the hallway. "Get with the schedule, Mark."

"That's hard to do when you do more laundry in a week than most people do in a month," Mark called after him as he headed down to the laundry room.

When Rob entered, he saw Rizzo, perched on the table that was intended to be used for folding clothes, frowning down at a crossword puzzle he was working on while he waited for a load of laundry to finish.

"Hi, Mac," said Rizzo, remaining uncharacteristically absorbed in his crossword and uninterested in a potential conversation.

"Hey, Rizzo," Rob answered as he crossed over to the washing machine that appeared most dependable, though that was damning the machine with faint praise, as the average appliance in the laundry room was as beneficial as a grave robber in a crematorium. Dumping his clothes and detergent into the machine, he continued, worried about Rizzo's reticence, "What's up?"

"Trying to remember—if I ever knew—the author of _Les Miserables_." Rizzo pinched the bridge of his nose and butchered the French pronunciation, placing too much emphasis on letters that should have been silent. "The name has four letters, the third of which is a g, assuming 'greenback' is the other word for dollar that goes in the down seven slot."

"Hugo," Rob supplied quickly, always happy when he could show his teammates how useful minutiae from his sophisticated interests could be even in trivial situations. "Hugo wrote _Les Miserables_."

"Thanks." Rizzo seemed so flat and depressed—like a person who had lost even the memory of hope and happiness—as he scribbled Hugo's name into the appropriate blank that Rob felt his own spirit wilting "I'll never remember that tidbit long enough to impress people with it at cocktail parties, but thanks."

"Any time." Rob smiled, and then took the plunge into awkwardness by asking, "Is something wrong?"

"That's the polite way of saying that with my Rudolph nose and puffy eyes I look like I contracted some terrible disease you hope to high heaven isn't contagious." Rizzo made a valiant effort to laugh when nothing was really funny, and Rob thought that was the true sound of heartbreak. A broken laugh was more devastating than a stifled whimper or shattered cry. "Anyway, no, nothing is wrong except that I can't find the net even though my life on this team depends on it."

"Everyone has bad days." Rob climbed onto the table beside Rizzo. "Did you see my shot yesterday that skidded three inches wide of the left goal post? That was so painful to watch I was tempted to blind myself with my stick."

"You're so conscientious with the puck that it almost always goes where you want it to, so Herb knows it wouldn't be fair to cut you over one bad shot that doesn't reflect who you are as a player." Rizzo put down his pen and crossword to eye Rob seriously. "With me, I have so many poor shots that it becomes who I am as a player. Sometimes I don't think it would be fair to the rest of you guys if Herb kept me on the team with my pathetic statistics."

"You could always make a new trend at the Olympics." Rob punched Rizzo lightly in the shoulder. "It's never too late to start accumulating points on your record, as the policeman said to the drunk driver."

"That would be a gamble, and the odds are so slim I might not even bet on myself." Rizzo snorted. "Robbie, I can't expect Herb to take a chance on me when the Olympic fate of the whole team hangs in the balance."

"You can expect him to honor your hard work and not bring in some new kid like Harrer at the last minute." Rob's jaw clenched. "That's a perfectly fair expectation, Mike, and don't let anyone convince you differently."

"Maybe Harrer would be a better choice for this team." Rizzo bit his lip. "He can score where I can't. He proved that at practice today."

"Bully for him," Rob glossed over this point as if it were of minimal significance, "but this team needs a leader, not another scorer. That means it needs you, not Harrer."

"This is a team full of leaders, Rob." Rizzo gave a slight smile that was more of an expression of sorrow than joy. "That's what makes it so special, but it's also what makes me as unnecessary as third wheel on a unicycle."

"Without one leader, we'd have a classic case of too many Indian chiefs," argued Rob, his gaze locking on Rizzo's. "We need one leader to unite us, and that means you."

"Nonsense." Rizzo rolled his eyes to show how unconvinced he was by this logic. "I mean, Bill was captain for the Gophers, wasn't he?"

"Yeah, and he and Herb bumped heads as often as you'd expect two such intelligent and stubborn people to do." Rob shook his head, remembering all the clashes inside and outside the locker room between Bill Baker and Herb Brooks. "I don't think either Bill or Herb are eager to repeat that mess. As I said, they're stubborn, not stupid, and there is a difference."

"Well, there's Buzz Schneider, too." Rizzo didn't miss a beat. "Everyone in the locker room respects him and his ability to remain calm when everything is going to hell in a hand basket. He is also the only one of us who played in the Olympics in '76. He can and does give this team practical advice about what it was like to play there, while I can only offer my best guesses of what it might be like to play at that level."

"All right. I won't insult your intelligence by pretending that Buzz isn't also a leader on this team." Rob hesitated, figuring out how to say what he wanted to express next, and then went on, "But, Rizzo, the catch is that Herb will never be comfortable with having as team captain someone who just smiles and shrugs if he is told that he is a shuffle short of a playing card. That isn't _intense _enough for Herb, who'd be afraid Buzz might just smile and shrug in a what-can-you-do-about-it way if we're down by a couple of points in an Olympic game."

"I don't think that Buzz would do that." Rizzo chortled. "Or if he did, the opposing team better be shaking in their skates, because when Buzz seems his most harmless, he is actually his most dangerous, so he'd probably score a goal and three assists before anyone except Pav and Bah had a clue what was happening."

"That sounds about right." Rob grinned, because nobody could understand what the Coneheads did on ice. Rob prided himself on his creative plays, but, compared to the Coneheads, he was hopelessly conventional on ice. Rob could think outside of the box, although he would always be aware of how far outside the box he was at any given time and how to return to it as swiftly as possible if that became necessary. In contrast, the Coneheads didn't even seem to know there was a box, or, if they did, they had no idea where it was located and absolutely no interest in playing in its confines except by chance. "But other teams could only make the mistake of underestimating Buzz if he wasn't captain. Everyone has to take the captain seriously, and Buzz wouldn't like that at all, anyway. That leaves you in the unenviable position of being our official leader, Rizzo."

"The official leader should be someone who is pretty much guaranteed to be in Lake Placid." Rizzo's mouth twisted wryly. "In other words, that eliminates me from consideration."

"I'm not going to let you be eliminated from anything, Mike." It seemed like the dumbest thing to say once Rob had said it, but there weren't any right words, not really.

Rob looked over at Rizzo, whose eyes were moist, and whose cheeks and nose were crimson. Rob wasn't used to seeing Rizzo this way. Rizzo had always been the strong one, the confident one, the outgoing one, the brave one. The one who kept the world and Herb Brooks from swallowing this rag-tag team whole, or so Rob had always believed.

"It's going to be okay, Mike," Rob vowed, as much to console himself as Rizzo, even though he knew that he did not have the power to assure that this promise would be fulfilled. He didn't know what else to do besides offer this hollow guarantee.

Swallowing the lump in his throat that was threatening to choke him, Rob thought of what Rizzo had done all the millions of times any of the team had come to him for comfort after suffering a blow to the heart or to the pride, so he reached over and patted Rizzo on the shoulder, returning all those favors all at once.

He and Rizzo sat there for a long time with the washing machines whirring loudly into the silence around them. It was the end of a long day of training, the end of December, and the end of a lot of things, and Rob just sat there with Rizzo, feeling the other boy's shoulders shake under his palms. He had no idea what to do to fix this mess or what would come next. All he knew was that Rizzo needed him, and he was there—he would always be there—and, for now, that was the best they could do.


	4. Chapter 4

"_Ain't it good to know that you've got a friend when people can be so cold? They'll hurt you and desert you and take your soul if you let them. Oh, but don't you let them."—__**You've Got a Friend**__, Carole King, 1971. _

Take Your Soul

"Delicious meatloaf, Buzz," Rizzo, back to his hearty self, shouted across the common room, where the entire team was assembled. It took creativity to fit them all, but they managed it, jamming into couches and chairs, perching on the wings of furniture, squeezing onto the windowsill and radiator, or sprawling on the shaggy carpet.

It wasn't exactly comfortable, being crammed together like eggs in a carton, but it was cozy. Even the flimsy paper plates laden with mashed potatoes and meatloaf that were balanced precariously on their knees and the bendy plastic forks they clutched in their hands felt right. Sometimes there was more pleasure to be found in eating a friend's culinary experiment in a room where most of the furniture could have been scavenged from a dump than in taking delicate bits of filet mignon off a porcelain platter in a gleaming dining room.

"Thanks." Buzz smiled. "It's my mom's recipe, but, of course, it didn't come out nearly as tasty as hers does."

"No son's best efforts at cooking can compete with his mother's," remarked Bah. "It's one of the greater tragedies of life, or at least mine. I'll try to follow Mom's directions on how to cook something, and I'll always end up with some black stuff nobody would want to eat if they were dying of hunger burned to the bottom of the pan."

"Yummy," observed Pav dryly, wrinkling his nose to indicate that he meant the total opposite of what he had just said and actually thought what Bah described revolting.

Rob couldn't help but stare at Pav, who was much more of an expert at communicating with gestures than with words. As a rule, he did not speak unless he was spoken to, and, even then, only if a non-verbal response wouldn't suffice. Of course, Buzz and Bah, the other players from Minnesota's northern mines known collectively as the Iron Range, did have a knack for drawing the tortoise that was Pav out of his shell. Sometimes Buzz or Bah could extract a whole sentence from Pav, which was the equivalent of getting anyone else to make an inspirational speech.

"At least we'll get a yummy dinner on Christmas," Silk put in, and beneath his cheery grin, Rob thought he saw how much the idea of having a lonely Christmas with poorly cooked food had been weighing on Silk's mind. "Or we should, anyway. Germans do know how to make a Christmas dinner, don't they?"

"Doc is Estonian." Verchota shot Silk his glare that announced louder than words his opinion that people who had no notion what they were talking about should remain silent, sparing everyone else the aggravation of listening to their stupidity. "But if you doubt that his wife can make a meal better than yours, just stay here by yourself and enjoy whatever you can cook up."

"You bet Germans like Christmas, Silky," added Buzz, his light tone making it hard to figure out if he was offended, but Rob supposed that he must be. The Iron Range was packed with families whose ancestors had immigrated from Germany and Yugoslavia, so Buzz would have to take Silk's question about Germans personally, the way Silk would have to be affronted on behalf of the Irish and Italian population of Boston if Buzz asked whether there were any Italians not affiliated with organized crimes or Irish not lost in their cups. "We invented the Christmas tree, don't you know?"

"That's better than anything the Scots-Irish came up with to celebrate the holiday," Rob commented, grateful that, in America, it was always acceptable to crack a joke at the expense of your own ethnicity. Awkward moments would stretch into infinity without that socially sanctioned bigotry. "We still can't figure out why haggis never caught on over here. To us, it's a real mystery why hot dogs and sausages are so popular, but everybody gages at the mere suggestion of eating haggis."

"What's haggis?" Silk sounded as if he already realized the answer would be disgusting but he couldn't prevent himself from seeking out the revulsion any more than a driver could stop rubbernecking a gruesome three car pile-up on the highway.

"You don't want to know," Bill Baker informed him firmly. "Especially not while you're eating. Bad for the digestion, if you take my meaning."

"You don't even want to find out a few hours later." Verchota, in the fashion of roommates and best friends everywhere, continued seamlessly where Bill had left his thought hanging. "You might revisit dinner in the most sickening way."

"You guys are so gross." O.C. snorted. "I'm just happy I'm near a window so I can make a quick escape from it all."

"That's so nice of you to say, Jack." Jim fixed his coldest blue stare on his old teammate from BU. "Jokes about suicide are never in bad taste, because it's always sensitive to laugh about leaving your friends and family when dying people everywhere are begging for just one more second with theirs."

"As you say, I was joking," O.C. snapped, stabbing at his meatloaf. "Maybe if you learned how to take a joke, you'd have more friends, Jim."

"Oh, and how do you make friends?" retorted Jim. "Do you just walk up to them and punch them in the face?"

Rob expected Rizzo or Silk to intervene to end the squabble between the other BU boys, so he was rather surprised when it was Janny who said, "Could we please stop fighting? It's Christmas time. I don't expect world peace any time soon, but peace during a team dinner would be nice and doable."

"Better do what Janny says before he starts reciting the passages from Isaiah about the lion laying down with the lamb," teased Christoff, eyes gleaming. Since Janny's parents were evangelical Christians whose missions in life (as far as Rob understood) were to convince as many people as possible to accept Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior, he got a lot of ribbing from teammates who, like Rob, came from more traditional Christian backgrounds and couldn't imagine attending church out of enthusiasm instead of duty.

"Or the prophecy about the Prince of Peace being born to rule over a dominion that is vast and forever peaceful." Strobel chuckled. "That's a particular favorite of my pastor's. He worms it into every Christmas sermon."

"You can laugh." Janny sighed. "But all your parents wanted you to do in church was stand and sit at the right times, and sing along tunelessly to the responsorial psalms. My parents wanted me to be genuinely excited by the Scriptures and singing."

"That's rough." Mark winced in sympathy. "It's hard to listen to people who think God would rather spend a Sunday morning doing a responsorial reading from the Bible than playing pick-up hockey at the pond."

"You're such a rebel." Caught between admiration and horror at this radical statement that came dangerously close to disrespecting God, Who was probably going to hurl a lightning bolt into the room to show His displeasure any second now, Rob grinned nervously. "If I ever experience a crisis in faith, I'll blame you."

"I'm not a total heathen." Mark blushed. "I believe in God and heaven, but I just think that if God is a Father, He should have a sense of fun, and if heaven exists, it should be like a never-ending hockey game."

"I had enough experience with a never-ending hockey game in Norway." Rammer rolled his eyes. "If that's heaven, I'll take my chances with hell."

"Herbies are heavenly." Neal Broten wore an expression of exaggerated rapture. "I guess I really had died and gone to heaven when I was in Oslo, but I confused it with hell, so God kicked me out for my ingratitude and sent me back to earth."

"There are no more Herbies in heaven, and in heaven, no matter how long you skate, you don't get tired—you can skate forever as hard as you want and not grow exhausted." Mark fiddled with his fork. "You guys might not share my idea of heaven, but you don't have to mock it. I don't poke fun at any of your religious beliefs."

"Let's focus on the beliefs we share, not the ones we don't," Rizzo suggested before Neal or Rammer could reply. "I'm sure than Christmas means a lot to all of us, so why don't we do something to make it extra special this year?"

"A group reading of the Song of Solomon?" Cox smirked. "That book is steaming with hot images."

"Get your mind out of the gutter." Rizzo shook his head and went on, "I was thinking we should do a Secret Santa. You know, we'll just write our names down, dump them in a hat, pull them out, and then get a present for whoever we pick out of the hat. We can have the exchange at Doc's party."

"It has to be gag gifts," O.C. stipulated. "We don't want to do anything heart-warming, or people might start thinking we don't hate each other's guts."

"Gag gifts are always a riot." Cox snickered as if he were already plotting prank presents for everyone in the room.

"Who doesn't need a laugh these days?" Buzz shrugged. "Gag gifts sound good to me."

Rizzo paused for a moment, and, when nobody voiced a disagreement, announced, "All right. I'm going to pass around a pen, a stack of papers, and a hat. Write your name on a piece of paper, put the paper in the hat, and pass everything onto your neighbor. Remember to write a name that will differentiate you from anyone else on the team who shares your first name."

"So I'm Mark J.," Mark stated wryly. "Brings back happy memories of elementary school."

As the paper stack, hat, and pen made its slow progress around the room, Janny asked, "Are we going to get the coaches anything? I mean, we don't want to offend them, do we?"

"Herb might be more offended by getting a gag gift than not." Morrow's forehead furrowed. "Has there ever been any proof that Herb has a humorous bone in his body?"

"I've documented it myself," answered Silk smoothly. "Most of his Brookisms are hilarious in a twisted way. That's why I started preserving them for posterity. Maybe we should give him the journal of his favorite sayings."

"He'd murder us." Bah shook his head. "I'd like to live long enough to see the New Year, if it's all the same to you, Silky."

"It might be safer to get him a murder weapon." Christoff's face was all craftiness. "Like a belt. That's what my dad would break out when he said he was going to kill me."

Around the room, there were appreciative chuckles, and Rob forced himself to join in, although the concept of the belt as an implement for anything other than holding up pants terrified him more than it amused him. When he was younger, he had seen in the locker room enough of the welts a belt could leave on a teammate's thighs that if his father's hand drifted toward his belt during an argument, Rob would decide he wanted to do nothing more than apologize and banish himself to his room for however long it took for his parents to determine his punishment.

To this day, he didn't know if that was cleverness or cowardice, but he did understand that being hit with a belt was no laughing matter. Yet, if he didn't laugh, he might end up admitting that he had never felt the sting of his father's belt, and that would probably mark him as a spoiled brat…He couldn't allow that. His parents had raised him with the perfect combination of high expectations and encouragement, freedom and restriction, sternness and gentleness. Any character flaws he had were his own fault, not an indictment. People could insult him all they liked, but they couldn't drag his parents into it. Dad worked too many hours a week in a stressful courtroom to make the money it took to provide a future for four sons, and Mom spent her days cooking, cleaning, and doing the myriad tasks required to make a home a refuge. They had done everything they could to raise four stubborn boys right, and they didn't deserve to be condemned by anyone for that.

"Too cliché." Buzz's sly voice cut into Rob's musings. "We can be more original than that. Let's give him a bullwhip."

"It invites all the obvious puns about whipping people into shape." Bill cocked his head in evaluation. "As a corny person, I approve."

"And it's so absurd that it's difficult not to crack a smile when you open it," agreed O.C. "That keeps with the spirit of gag gifts the world over."

"A bullwhip it is then," Rizzo declared when nobody raised any objections, and Rob thought that the fact he had ended up in a room full of boys who were convinced that quips about skinning them were funnier than any skit Saturday Night Live ever produced was probably a sign that he needed to hunt for new buddies. "So, what are we going to get for Coach Patrick?"

"A megaphone," said Christian after a moment's pensive silence. "That way we could hear him when he talks."

"A number line," Bah suggested, as the dwindling stack of papers, hat, and pen finally reached Rob, who scribbled his name on a sheet and dumped the paper into the hat before passing everything onto Cox. "You know, so he can use it to count to ten every time he wants to lose patience with somebody."

"A rubber." Cox looked up from filling out his paper with his name. "That will come in handy when all the ladies chase after him."

"A whistle." O.C.'s trademark smirk was entrenched in his features. "To remind him of Norway and how much he blows as a coach."

There was an outburst of laughter that echoed throughout the room, and this time, Rob really joined in. He might never be fully over what happened to him and his teammates in Norway, but he had reached the point where he could chuckle about it, at least with those who had shared the misery and the horror of that eternal marathon of Herbies.

No joke could diminish what they had endured, but they were resilient enough to find something funny out of a scene that would probably haunt their nightmares into senility, so the last laugh would be on Herb. They could turn something that should have destroyed them into what made them whole. That was the power they had discovered within and outside themselves when they lost control of their breathing, heartbeat, and leg muscles. Remembering, as he saw his teammates collapse with laughter, how they had all sagged against the ice in Oslo, Rob thought, _Our strength was proven when it should have been gone, and we're either really well-adjusted or total basket cases to find any of this amusing. _

Coach Patrick definitely had not found the endless procession of Herbies amusing. For the first few, he had been grimly approving of the discipline for the lack of effort that had characterized the debacle of the tie with Norway. However, when the boys had started vomiting, he had looked as if he were on the verge of throwing up himself. His face showing how wrong he had felt what he was doing was, Coach Patrick had continued to raise the whistle shrilly to his lips whenever Herb commanded.

That was why, for weeks after the Herbies episode, Rob had experienced a surge of resentment instead of respect every time he interacted with Coach Patrick. Coach Patrick might have seemed soft-spoken and compassionate, Rob had decided bitterly, but he was more dangerous to his players than Herb Brooks would ever be.

Agree or disagree with what Herb had done in that Oslo rink (and Rob could never choose which side of the fence he wanted to plant his feet upon), Herb's stony face and flinty gaze had demonstrated that he was utterly convinced he was the right thing for the right reasons, so he would remain as implacable as a boulder. Perhaps he was as deluded about the parade of Herbies being in the best interest of his players as Stalin had been about Communism saving the Russian people, but at least Herb hadn't thought that he was doing anything to seriously hurt his players.

On the other hand, Coach Patrick had obviously let himself be intimidated into doing something he perceived as wrong and abusive to those beneath him (whom he was supposed to protect), because he didn't have the nerve to stick to his convictions. As far as Rob was concerned, that made Coach Patrick weak and untrustworthy. Sure, he might act like he was a friend, but when you most needed him to defend you, he wouldn't do so with any degree of effectiveness and persistence. In Rob's view, Coach Patrick, not anyone on the wheezing and vomiting team, had been the weakest person in that Norwegian arena.

Only the daze brought on by the high altitude of the trans-Atlantic flight back to the United States had made Rob recognize that he couldn't judge Coach Patrick harshly without condemning himself. After all, like Coach Patrick, he couldn't resist the voice of authority when it snapped at him to go just one step further, even if it meant killing himself, because he trusted Coach Brooks to know better than he did how far was too far. He believed what he had been told since he was a Pee Wee: that he couldn't achieve his full potential unless he was willing to keep pushing himself when his coach kept raising the bar. He accepted without questioning that the enemy of best was good and that he could never become the player he was meant to be if he stopped at the player he thought he could be.

"A whistle would show Coach Patrick that we really don't hold a grudge about Norway if we're willing to make a joke about it." That seemed important to do, because, with Herb, there might be nothing to forgive since Herb would never see anything wrong with what he did on that Oslo rink, but, with Coach Patrick there was. After all, what power did friendship have except forgiveness? What good would friendship be unless, by its interventions, what had been done could be undone? You had to forgive your friends, and if you forgave them enough, you belonged to them and they to you, whether either person liked it or not.

Unable to resist the chance to goad his former adversary from Boston, Rob added, "I suppose that the odds dictate that even someone like O.C. who gargled from the Fountain of Knowledge when everyone else drank can be right every once in a blue moon. The law of averages and all."

"I'd like to insult you, Mac, but the sad truth is that you wouldn't understand me," O.C. taunted back. "I'll just say that what you lack in charm you more than make up for in stupidity."

"One day, you guys will decide to act your age, and I'll try not to die of a heart attack." Rizzo rolled his eyes, and then asked, "Is everybody okay with getting Coach Patrick a whistle?"

Once again, there was a scattered murmur of confirmation from the boys around the room, and Rizzo went on, shoving the hat filled with the slits of paper that bore their names toward Verchota, "Everyone, pick a name out of the hat when it comes to you. If you get your own name, just put it back and choose another one."

The hat progressed quickly from waiting hand to waiting hand. Rob could see the anticipation on the faces of those who hadn't picked a name yet, and the cunning gleam that indicated the plotting of mischief in the eyes of those who had pulled a paper from the hat. When the hat reached him, he reached in, removed a paper, and, after passing the hat along to Cox, looked down at his paper to read: _Dave Silk_.

Silky, Rob thought, smirking. The nickname had always reminded him of a description of women's lingerie, so maybe Christmas would be the perfect time to share this association with his teammates…

"I'm going to get a start on the dishes," announced Buzz, standing as the hat finished its trip around the room and was returned to Rizzo.

"I'll help you," Mark, considerate as ever, volunteered, getting to his feet.

"I'll dry," put in Bah, trailing out of the room on the heels of Buzz and Mark.

That appeared to be the signal for their team dinner to end. Suddenly, the garbage can by the door was buried under an avalanche of used plates and utensils as the boys exited the common room and moved down the hallway back to their dorm rooms.

Grateful for the privacy that would come from the fact that Mark would be busy with the dishes for at least half an hour, Rob plopped on his bed, grabbed the phone out of its cradle, and dialed his home number. After two rings, the voice of Rob's younger brother, Stuart, came over the line, "Hello?"

"Hey, Stu," Rob answered. "How are you doing?"

"I'm swamped with dirty dishes and exams." As Stuart, a senior in high school, spoke, Rob could hear the sloshing sound of suds being scrubbed over dishes in a sink, and he could picture his little brother's petulant pout. Schoolwork and chores were two of Stu's least favorite things. "How do you think I'm doing, huh?"

"Ah, finals. Don't miss those." Torn between amusement and sympathy, Rob inquired, "So, what tests are on the schedule for tomorrow?"

"Trigonometry and physics," grumbled Stuart. "Also known as the multiple choice exams from hell designed as a form of mental torture by two demons disguised as teachers. The two tests that will give me a psychological butt-kicking and leave me crying among the remains of what used to be my sanity. I guarantee that within five seconds of starting either exam, I'll be thinking _this question is the brainchild of evil_."

"Yeah, that will happen as soon as you see the option all of the above," Rob remarked, remembering all too well how he had screamed inside every time he saw that option on a multiple choice test. Their grades suggested that neither he nor Stu were bad test-takers, but that didn't stop them from feeling like they were whenever they sat down to take a multiple choice exam.

"None of the above is worse," pointed out Stuart, all bitterness. "None of the above. Seriously, why would you bother inventing all those false options just to make your students tear their brains out?"

"The deluxe combination is when all of the above and none of the above are given as answers for the same question," Rob said dryly. "On the one hand, I'd always feel sorry for whatever happened to the teacher that made them feel the need to hurt innocent people in that way. On the other hand, I'd think they were a psychopath, and I should be leaving the room immediately."

"Between all those wonderful options, it's only a good three minutes before my selection logic boils down to the fact that I haven't chosen B in awhile." Stuart snorted into the phone. "Then, two moments after that, it occurs to me that my answers are all lining up, and there are four A's in a row, which is too many A's. Abort."

"And two minutes after that, there's a pattern—A,B,C,D—which will probably open a portal to doom right there in the classroom." Rob chuckled.

"Not long after that, I'm ripping my hair out over another question because I guessed C before, but now I'm thinking it's A, but now I'm thinking it actually was C, and my brain is collapsing in on itself, so it would probably best if I scribbled all over my answer sheet like the lawless dissident I am." Stuart's laugh floated across the line. "I'm just a hopeless failure."

"That's how I'd always feel when my pencil was too dark and the eraser too smeary, and now the teacher was going to mark my hard work incorrect, so my ambitions would be reduced to nothing but dust in the wind." Rob wrinkled his nose. "So many stressful, traumatic memories."

"That's how I feel when time is running out during a test, so the last ten answers will be an interesting product of last-minute desperation and an overarching inability to feel the things I used to feel." Stuart sighed. "I'm paralyzed just imagining that."

"Just don't make the mistake of skipping a question on the test but not on the answer sheet, so none of the answers line up," teased Rob. "If you do that, all you can really do is sob, cackle, cause a minor disturbance, jump out the window, and ultimately fade from the public eye."

"You're speaking from experience, of course," Stuart fired back. "Anyway, it's reassuring to me that you messed up so consistently. It means that, no matter how badly I do at anything, at least I'll still have done better than you."

"Just trying to set a fine example," replied Rob with exaggerated seriousness.

"I appreciate it." Stuart snickered. "By the way, I've got messages to pass along to you from some of your old high school admirers. Coach Wegleitner asked me to tell you that you're still the fastest skater he has ever met, and Coach Manley wanted me to remind you if you get a pass from slightly behind the net and wait for the goalie to drop, you have a nice opportunity to score a five-hole."

"I remember him teaching me that maneuver," Rob observed dryly, trying to conceal how happy it made him that his high school head and assistant hockey coaches had not forgotten him and still tried to give him advice. When he had graduated from high school so many years ago now, he had hoped that they would miss his shot, speed, and determination. Every player wanted to feel indispensable and irreplaceable to his coach and team, even after his days with the coach or on the team had officially concluded. The hallmark of an excellent coach was that his words rang in your head years after you were done playing for him, so it followed logically that a player could not be great unless his coach felt his absence in a line-up years in the future. "Next time you see them, tell them I said thanks."

_And that will assure them that I still think of them and if they still regard me as their player, then that is enough to make it true,_ Rob finished internally. _After all, even if you try to take yourself away from a coach who holds you fast, if that coach still believes you are his player, you always will be. Herb taught me that._

"All right." Stu gave a long-suffering sigh. "One day I'll have the sense to demand a tip for my delivery services. If you're going to treat me like a telegraph boy, you should have to pay me like one."

"Study hard, and you can have a more glamorous career than delivering messages, I promise." Rob laughed, and then wanted to know, "Is Mom or Dad around?"

"Yeah. One second." There was a pause in which Stu could be heard shouting loudly enough for the neighbors to hear that Rob was on the telephone. Then, Stuart's voice came back on the line to announce, "Mom will be down in a minute to speak to you. Feel free to hold your breath while you're waiting."

As promised, a moment later, Rob's mother's voice drifted through the receiver. "Hi, Robbie. How are you doing?"

"Surviving," Rob responded, thinking that was the most positive twist on his emotional state when he was dealing with Tim's presence in practice. The more negative answer was potentially homicidal, but he didn't think that Mom wanted to hear about him battling his urges to commit assault with his hockey stick. She might not have understood the difference between icing and boarding, since her hockey knowledge was limited to the fact that the black disc sailing into the net meant a goal, but even she could comprehend that sounded like bad news.

"I see." His mom hesitated, and then proceeded delicately, "I don't suppose that Herb's given any updates about his final roster, has he?"

"You suppose right." His jaw clenching, Rob twirled the phone cord around his fingers, cutting off his circulation and not caring, because, when he was snapping from feeling too much, it was a blessing to have one part of his body be numb. "Since you ask that every time we speak, Mom, and I do have a better long-term memory than a gnat, why don't you just trust me to tell you about that when I actually have something to report? That would save us both a lot of trouble and awkwardness."

"Don't take that tone with me, Robert," she reprimanded, and Rob still found it unsettling how she could shift from coddling to scolding in a blink. "I understand that you're under a lot of stress now, but that doesn't give you the right to disrespect anyone, especially your family members."

"You're right." Rob bit his lip, ashamed at his tendency to lash out at those closest to him when he was feeling vulnerable. All too often a friend or family member who tried to support him when he was going through a rough patch would be the victim of his sarcasm. It was probably a mercy that he had anyone willing to talk to him at all by this point, given his propensity toward verbal abuse. "I'm sorry, Mom. I shouldn't take my temper out on you."

"Your dad and I love you very much," his mom murmured soothingly, as if Rob had run wailing to her with a skinned knee like the five-year-old he could barely recall ever being. "We've always been so proud of your achievements, and we just want to be able to support you no matter what happens."

"I know, Mom." Rob's throat constricted. He knew that he was indescribably fortunate to have been born to parents who had always provided for him in every sense imaginable. They pushed him to do his best, but comforted him whenever he felt that his best hadn't been good enough. They taught him the skills and beliefs he needed to be successful. They filled him with faith in himself because they never gave up on him. They made him keep his grades up if he wanted to play sports, and then attended as many games as they could. They had celebrated with him when his Pee Wee team won states and his Bantam team nationals. They had consoled him when his high school team lost in the state tournament. If he made it to the Olympics, and, even more dangerous to imagine for fear of heartbreak, got a medal with his team, it would be because of them. They had been his first coaches—the ones who taught him the values of hard work, respect, determination, and discipline better than anyone else could have—and he would always try to make them proud by playing in the most important game, life, as they had shown him. "I am grateful for all that you and Dad have done to encourage me."

"Your dad and I just want to make sure that, if you are in the Olympics, we're there to cheer you on," his mother went on, all gentleness. "Since many other people in America and the rest of the world plan on attending the Olympics, we have to buy plane tickets and book hotel rooms. That's stressful, but we don't mean to pile any more pressure on you."

"I wish that Herb would announce his roster already," muttered Rob, mentally amending, _And by that I mean the __**right **__roster, the one with Rizzo and not Tim_. "I guess he's afraid that we'll start slacking off if we're not worried about losing our spots."

"Don't worry about losing your spot on the team, Robbie." His mom adopted her most reassuring tone. "That's not going to happen."

In the background, there was the sound of Rob's father entering the kitchen, demanding what this talk about losing a spot on the team was about. A second later, Rob's mom said, "Your dad wants to speak to you. I'm putting him on now."

"What's this, son, about losing your spot on the team?" Rob's dad asked after a second's intermission in the same manner he would assume when cross-examining a witness.

"Tim Harrer has been at practice the past two days, Dad," explained Rob, aiming a kick at his bedpost. "Now everyone is more anxious than ever about being cut."

"Harrer is a right-winger, and you play left wing and center," his father pointed out, as if Rob needed reminding. "I don't see how he can be meant to replace you when you don't even play the same positions."

"Dad, if Harrer can replace some unlucky right-winger at the last minute, what's to stop Herb from bringing in another left-winger to take my place just before the Olympics?" answered Rob, wishing that he didn't have to state the obvious. "Harrer joining the team so late would set a bad precedent. That's why everybody is so concerned. It's all of our necks that could be on the block."

"If you're worried about a bad precedent being set, what are you doing to ensure a favorable ruling?" Rob's father asked, and Rob almost groaned, wondering if Dad had been born with the knack of posing just the wrong—or right, depending on one's perspective—question.

"Um, I tried sarcasm, but that backfired quite spectacularly, denting my confidence," Rob admitted, glad that his rueful expression could not be glimpsed through the telephone wires. "Then I attempted to convince Mark Johnson to help me sabotage Tim by messing up our passes to him, but Mark ended up persuading me that would just be undermining ourselves, not Tim, because Herb would be able to see through what we were doing. Since then, I haven't had any more bright ideas, unfortunately."

"Sometimes you make things too complicated, Robbie." Rob didn't have to see his dad to know that he was shaking his head in mild reproof. "Did it ever occur to you that you could simply talk to Herb about your concern over Harrer's presence at practices?"

"Herb is difficult to talk to, Dad, so that's easier said than done." Exasperated, Rob took advantage of the fact that he couldn't be seen through phone lines to roll his eyes. "Banging my head against a brick wall repeatedly would be less painful and more productive than a one-on-one chat with him."

"If everybody on the team is upset about Harrer's presence, then you don't have to confront Herb alone," Rob's father reasoned patiently, as if the problem were talking to Herb alone rather than speaking with him at all. "You just need to gather up a handful of teammates you'd trust to have your back in an argument and speak to Herb about Harrer in private. That private part is very important, though. People in authority can get nasty if you do anything that could be perceived as challenging them in public."

"Herb is always nasty," commented Rob, pressing his lips together grimly. "It's his default state. He was probably born arguing with people and trying to disprove the stereotype about Minnesotans being nice folks."

"Part of life is learning to deal with people you find terrifying and disagreeable," his dad told him, and Rob knew that Dad was speaking from experience that started with Rob's paternal grandfather.

The best indicator of the health that characterized the relationship between Rob's father and grandfather was the fact that Dad's decision to become a lawyer was irrevocably sealed when he realized that his own father hated the legal profession. Dad had been a young teenager, clumsy, embarrassed by his own awkwardness in his body, aggravated with life, horrified by puberty, and in danger of being shipped off to a military school by Rob's grandfather, an ex-Marine who believed boys should live by the crack of a whip. In adolescence, Dad, by his own account, had developed a quick tongue and an aversion to discipline, and Grandpa's solution had simply been to threaten to send him away. Rob still wasn't sure that Dad had forgiven Grandpa for that.

Grandpa had also been an industrial engineer who worked seventy hours a week for a company that made, among many other items, ladders. Since by their nature ladders are perilous devices that become more of a menace as the intelligence of the user declines, his company became a frequent target of lawsuits. And because he handled design, Grandpa was the favorite choice to speak for the company in depositions and trials. Rob couldn't say that he blamed his grandfather for hating lawyers, but he also understood how his dad had come to admire them because they made Grandpa's life so miserable. Grandpa would spend eight hours haggling with them, and then hit the martinis as soon as he walked in the front door. No hellos. No hugs. No family dinner. Just an hour or so of continuous whining while he slugged down four martinis then passed out in his battered recliner.

Rob was just hoping that alcoholism did not run in his family when his dad finished whatever advice he had been offering with the simple statement, "Trust me. As a lawyer, I have to do that all the time."

"Do you have to convince someone who is the prosecuting attorney, jury, judge, and executioner to come around to your point of view?" demanded Rob. His stomach was knotting, because, in the absence of any better strategy and in no doubt that he would go crazy if he didn't take some action (no matter how hopeless or ill-advised), he was already planning who he would ask to confront Herb with him, and what he would say when he was facing Herb to make his case against Harrer. He suspected that the words would slip from his mind and tongue the second he opened his mouth, but it was better to be prepared and hope that one word of the speech he planned would stick in his brain than to have to invent everything when his wits had stranded him. "That's what my teammates and I will have to do, Dad."

"You're smart, stubborn, and stronger than you realize, Rob," his father informed him calmly. "As long as you don't lose your confidence or your temper, you can win an argument with Herb or anyone else."

"What if Herb cuts me for making a fuss over the Harrer issue?" The question Rob had been trying not to think about since Tim's arrival burst out of his mouth.

"Then he doesn't deserve to coach a player as good as you," his dad replied in the tone he would probably use if he was convincing the jury that everyone except the defendant was guilty. "If he's petty enough to cut someone for being concerned about the team's welfare, he deserves a team full of selfish people who put their individual needs above the group's. With a team like that at the Olympics, he won't have much success."

"Dad." Rob swallowed, and then admitted quietly, "I want to make this team more than I've wanted anything in my life. The thought of working so hard and not making it sickens me."

"When Herb picked you for the team in Colorado, he knew how stubborn you are after four years of coaching you," his father assured him. "You were probably selected more because of your determination than in spite of it."

"There are plenty of determined people on this team," muttered Rob, taking an unexpected and intense interest in his cuticles. "Being stubborn hardly makes me indispensable around here."

"You're a fast skater, a strong two-way player, you have a solid penalty kill, and you've been a top scorer throughout the exhibitation games," his father pointed out. "You're on the team because Herb wants _you_ on it."

"I know he chose me because he thought I could do well on the team." Rob nudged his cuticles back. "But sometimes it feels like all I do is let him down, you know. Yesterday I had a shot that skidded three inches wide of the left goal post like I was aiming at the boards instead of the net. It was horrible, and Herb said that I looked like a chicken with its head cut off. He wasn't that far off, and I wanted to cut off my own head I was so ashamed."

"Listen to me, Robbie." Rob's dad paused, as if to ensure that he had Rob's complete attention, and Rob reluctantly ceased pushing at his cuticles as his father resumed, "Don't torture yourself by telling yourself after every mistake that Herb is going to cut you for it. Herb's blunt. If he'd decided that you didn't belong on the team, I'm sure he'd tell you that in no uncertain terms."

"Like the ones he used when he told Mark and me yesterday that he'd get a different first line if we didn't listen to him better?" Rob asked listlessly, going back to fiddling with his cuticles.

Since Herb made that ultimatum, Rob had been trying not to think about it. After the constant line-shuffling that defined Herb's tactics at the U, he should have been accustomed to never really knowing where he ranked in the locker room pecking order, never certain whether he was a first liner or a fourth. It wasn't that Rob minded being moved from one line to another—although the thought of being demoted permanently did make him want to hide under his bed until he could bear to face the world again—because in the exhibitation games only the Conehead line had been kept intact throughout them all and that was mainly because any forward who tried to replace Buzz, Bah, or Pav could do nothing more than try not to block the passes between the other two Coneheads. No, it was just that Rob was afraid that once he started his fall from the grace of the first line, nothing could stop him from plummeting off the team. When it came down to it, Rob wasn't good enough to play on an Olympic team, especially not on the first line, and eventually, Herb would realize that and send Rob home…At least, that was Rob's biggest fear.

"There's no reason for Herb to replace you." His father's voice was stern now. "He knows you and what you can do on the ice. If you weren't living up to your potential, it would make sense for him to consider other options, but since you are, there is no cause for him to take a chance with someone whose capabilities he doesn't know as well."

"Yes, Dad." Rob nodded, still not entirely convinced by this logic.

"Seriously, Robbie." His dad obviously detected his dubiousness. "Herb was just trying to spur you and Mark onto greater heights. He doesn't push you and Mark because he wants to see you two fail, but because he knows what you both are capable of and wants to see you reach your full potential."

"I know that." Rob sighed, and then went on sheepishly, "Most of the time. It's just that sometimes I feel like such an idiot when I can't do something, or I can't do it fast enough or well enough to satisfy him. It feels like I'm only pretending to be a hockey player, so I just should stop wasting everyone's time with my delusion about actually having a clue how to hit the puck with a stick."

"Ever since you touched the ice, you've skated like the wind." His father's tone was husky now. "If you skate like that when you were four, you can make the Olympic team now."

Rob wanted to remind his dad that many hockey parents had probably made similar predictions before the trials in Colorado, and, in the end, only twenty sets of parents would be right about their son being good enough to make the roster. However, he found himself suddenly thrust back in time and unable to comment in the present conversation.

He was four—almost five—and standing beside the neighborhood pond two hundred yards from his house. Skates were tied around his ankles, and he hated how wobbly they made him in the snow. He didn't want to go skating, because he didn't like the idea of how off-balance and uncontrolled he could become on ice, but his father had insisted that he attempt it, since he couldn't truly know that he disliked something until he tried it. Scowling, Rob had resolved that he would detest skating just as he loathed spinach and broccoli and all the other vegetables Dad had used similar logic to goad him into eating.

That rebellious plot had slid off the tracks as soon as Rob skated onto the pond beside his father, clinging onto the end of a hockey stick. He had loved the sound of the blades slicing crisply through the ice. He had enjoyed being able to push on the hard surface and still feel himself bounce forward. The cold wind whipping against his cheeks and teeth made him want to go faster and be freer than he had ever been before, so, before he could think about what he was doing, he had released the stick and was speeding away from his dad.

He had expected Dad to yell at him to stop or to race up behind him, snatch him up, and give him a lecture about skating safety, but his father seemed to sense that it would hurt Rob more to be made to stop than to be allowed to fall. Rob had skated faster and faster and smoother and smoother until it occurred to him that he was nearing the end of the pond, where the pine trees were, and he didn't know how to stop. He jerked his arms and legs around frantically, but nothing happened except he wheeled about, lost his balance, and began to fall.

He had been bracing himself for the freezing smash of his body banging against the icy pond when Coach Wegleitner, who had always been a giant of Rob's childhood because he coached the high school hockey team that was as revered in North Oaks as a football team would have been in Texas, shocked him by catching him by the elbow at the last second before he made contact with the ice, teaching him that whenever a coach caught you, it was by surprise.

Chuckling, Coach Wegleitner had remarked that Rob was the fastest little skater he had ever seen, but he needed to learn how to stop. Then the high school hockey coach whom Rob was convinced was some sort of minor deity had leaned over and shown him how to position his skates so that they would cut into the ice at the right angle to stop his movement. After that, whenever Coach Wegleitner told Rob that he was a fast skater, Rob's mind would inevitably return to this moment, and he would feel secure, confident that his strengths would be praised with a smile and his weaknesses would be corrected briskly but not cruelly.

The stopping hadn't come as quickly and naturally to him as the speeding had, and, coming out of his reverie at last, Rob thought that, if he were an airplane, he would have fifty propellers and only an afterthought of landing gear that he would cobble together just before he realized he was about to crash and burn onto the runway.

"I'm still picking up speed, Dad." Rob grinned devilishly, knowing his father could hear his smile through the phone lines as any good parent could. "I guess I'll leave it to Herb to figure out whether I come with brakes."

_After all_, Rob concluded mentally, _I am the player who takes it as a personal challenge when Herb points out that a puck travels faster than anyone can skate. To me, the fact that you can stop in an instant on a sheet of solid ice will always seem like more of a defiance of the laws of physics than the idea that you can skate faster than a little black disc. _


	5. Chapter 5

"_I'll take your part when darkness comes, and pain is all around. Like a bridge over troubled water, I will lay me down."—__**Bridge Over Troubled Water, Simon and Garfunkel, 1970. **_

Bridge Over Troubled Water

As he climbed onto the bus after a good game against the IHL All-Stars, Rob glanced around the bus, searching for his target: the person he had to convince to confront Herb with him about Tim. Once he had gotten off the phone with his dad, it had taken Rob all of a minute to realize that he would need an East Coaster as an ally if he hoped to have any success whatsoever in an argument with Herb.

The language of Minnesotans, which Rob had learned to be conversant in since he was knee-high to a grasshopper, included almost no adversarial words and few statements of strong personal preference. Such elements were replaced with a tendency toward understatement and sarcasm, a reluctance to make a fuss, an aversion to conflict, and a reliance on self-deprecatory humor.

East Coasters, Rob discovered before their first practice even started, were a different animal. In Minnesota, people like Rizzo and O.C. stuck out like sore thumbs. They could be spotted from a country mile away, waving their arms in the air like windmills, arguing about minutia, and complaining (loudly, of course, because East Coasters were used to shouting over roaring jackhammers, clanging subways, and blaring taxi horns) about having to wait around for something or other, since East Coasters were always in a hurry. Perhaps they all harbored subconscious fears of missing the next bus or train. When he first met the Boston boys, Rob, along with most of the Minnesota players, thought they seemed too frank, in-your-face, aggressive, argumentative, and even, in the case of Jack O'Callahan, downright scary.

It had taken time for Rob to come to understand and even appreciate those qualities, but now that he needed to win a debate with Herb in order to keep this team together, he was indescribably grateful for the East Coaster predilection for approaching conversations as if they were arguments. The high volume and unbridled passion that were the hallmarks of the East Coaster would be immensely useful in a confrontation with someone as stubborn and blunt as Herb.

"Do you mind if I take this seat?" Rob asked Rizzo once he had found his target, nodding his head at the vacant seat next to Rizzo.

"Of course not." Rizzo squeezed closer to the window to give Rob more space. "Make yourself comfortable."

"Thanks." Rob hesitated for only a second, gathering his courage, as the bus drove out of the stadium lot, because he knew that he had to steer the discussion in the direction he wished it to go before Rizzo dominated it entirely. Then he began, "You know, Rizzo, I've been thinking…"

That was a promising start, but he couldn't bring himself to continue—to be the one who mentioned Tim when Rizzo had been so crushed by Herb's assuring Harrer on the bench that all he cared about in a forward was goal-scoring. Personality, it sounded like, would take a back seat to statistics, if it would even be a consideration at all. That was devastating news to a player who contributed more in intangibles than in goals and assists.

"Always a bad sign." Rizzo laughed, and when Rob stayed silent too long, prompted, "What about?"

"Tim," Rob burst out, throwing caution and tact to the wind, "and how unfair it is that he is here."

"Mac." Rizzo pronounced Rob's nickname with a weary impatience that informed Rob this conversation had already been derailed from the place he had envisioned it traveling to. "We've been griping about how unfair it is that Harrer is here ever since he arrived, but it hasn't done any good."

"It could do some good." Rob's eyes widened earnestly. "The reason it hasn't so far is that none of us have been willing to _do_ anything after the talking has come to an end, and none of the discussions have centered around what we can do to convince Herb to get rid of Tim."

As he said this, Rob's eyes flicked guiltily toward the front of the bus, where Tim, alone in the seat diagonal from Herb and Patrick, was staring blankly out the window at the cars and trucks streaming by them on the highway. Tim, although he had played well and scored a goal, looked so battered that Rob experienced a sudden temptation to walk down the aisle and plop down next to Tim, finally offering welcome and forgiveness to his old line mate.

That would make Tim smile, but Rob couldn't do it because he had to stand behind Rizzo and the rest of the team, so, drowning in remorse, Rob remembered a picture he had of Tim beaming since he couldn't make the real Tim grin any more. Rob had taken the photograph in a knick-knack store in South Dakota where they were hanging out before a game, because Tim had been so ridiculous in the over-sized sombrero he was trying on that he had all but begged to be immortalized in that pose.

Rob's whole body had been quaking with mirth when he snapped the photo, so the picture was blurry, and Tim's eyes were obscured by the massive sombrero brim, but Rob loved the photograph anyway. Tim had a devilish little knowing smile on his face, as if he recognized that he was going to look foolish in a picture forever, and he didn't care. That smile—that was what always captivated Rob about the photo. That grin illustrated so many of the characteristics he valued about Tim. It showed Tim how Rob always wanted to imagine him: happy, mischievous, confident, and daring enough to take a wild risk. Mostly, Rob guessed, it defined a friend for whom he had a lot of affection.

_I remember so much about that picture, Timmy_, Rob thought, wishing that Tim were a mind reader, so that he could understand how much Rob's heart was breaking, _but I can't remember whole pieces of that smile I'm afraid I'll never see again. It's like part of the punishment for siding against you is a recollection of our friendship through a filer that grows hazier with time. Now, when I think of your smile, I can't remember what your teeth looked like between your lips, or the exact curve of your jaw when it relaxed into a grin, but please don't snort when I promise that one day we'll laugh as easily as we did in that random South Dakota shop. We'll run into each other in a busy market somewhere in the Twin Cities even though I never go to the market. And we'll decide to have lunch at a bar, and we'll talk over beers. We'll keep talking until the moon is high in the sky, and the night manager kicks us out. It'll be a perfect, ordinary experience that proves to us both that we could never be more strangers than friends. _

"These conversations are always a waste of time." Rizzo shook his head as Rob returned his attention to the person sitting next to him. "We just go around in circles and never decide to do anything."

"I want to decide on what to do and then do it," protested Rob.

"I want a vacation house in Hawaii." Rizzo chuckled. "You can want whatever you like, Robbie. That doesn't mean you'll get it."

"It does if you work hard enough," insisted Rob quietly, because if he didn't believe that he didn't believe in himself, this team, or America. "I intend to speak to Herb about how unfair it is to replace one of us with Harrer. I'll do that with or without your support, Rizzo, but I'd be lying if I claimed that your advice and back-up would be anything less than welcome."

Uncharacteristically, Rizzo didn't respond right away, gazing out the window at the crowded highway as if he could find the right reply there in the blackness. The highway was always packed, even in the middle of the night, with a pattern of crimson tail-lights that stretched ahead like an angry snake for miles. There were so many people on the road, Rob mused. Where were they going so fast at this hour?

Usually, Rob took pleasure in highways. There had been plenty of times that he drove home to North Oaks from Minneapolis or Saint Paul with big green signs flashing past overhead, and the intricate web of overpasses and underpasses, and the exhilaratingly anonymous speed. He had felt wonderful, expansive, and free, as if he were a pioneer in a twentieth century covered wagon caravan. He had been raised with the first of the highways, and the system had developed as he had. He didn't see the highway system that spanned the country as a menace or an evil. It was an exciting part of the landscape; it was quick; it was fun.

Only recently had he begun to notice the subtly crippling ramifications of living inside an automobile. There was something inhuman about wrapping yourself in a cocoon of tinted glass and stainless steel. It thwarted some deep human need to congregate, to be together, to see and be seen. No wonder people in 1979 were so lonely, complaining of feeling cut off-isolated from friends, and far from families and old homes. No wonder some became suicidal, picking their favorite overpass, hitting it at eighty or ninety miles per hour, foot flat to the floor….

"I don't know why you want to risk Herb's wrath by fighting him tooth and nail about Harrer," Rizzo commented at last, returning his attention to Rob. "Harrer obviously isn't meant to replace you, and with your high scoring record this season, you're basically as much a lock for this team as anyone who isn't named Mark Johnson or Jim Craig can be. Why run the danger of throwing that away for someone like me who can't even put the puck in the net?"

Rob bit his lip and glanced around at the boys filling the rows nearby, since he didn't want anyone overhearing his sentimentality. In the row upfront, Mark appeared to be asleep (but Rob wasn't going to check too closely for fear of seeming like a creepy roommate) and O.C. was buried in a newspaper proclaiming the bleak condition of the world.

Behind Rob and Rizzo, Bill and Phil were engaged in an intense, hushed exchange in which Rob could only make out the phrase "dental school." Those two words were enough to fill Rob's stomach with ice. He knew that Bill, anxious about his future and irked by the fact that no amount of hard work could guarantee a berth on the Olympic roster, had applied to dental school. Now that he had been accepted, Bill was torn about what was best for him: sticking with the team in the hope that he would make it to the Olympics or pursuing the higher education necessary for a career in dentistry.

Rob hoped that Phil would be able to convince Bill to keep playing hockey at least until the Olympics were over, because he didn't want anyone on the team leaving by their own volition or giving up on their shared dream of going to Lake Placid and maybe even scraping a medal. As far as Rob was concerned, as long as you felt like you still belonged on this team, you were a member, no matter what Herb said on the contrary, and Rob wanted Bill, who was such high-scoring defensemen, to stick with this team until the bitter end.

Reminding himself sternly that someone as clever as Bill could be trusted to make the best choice, Rob flicked his eyes over to the rows on the opposite side of the aisle, ascertaining that none of the boys there were eavesdropping on his conversation with Rizzo. Buzz and Bah, who were across from Mark and O.C., were riveted on a rousing match of slapjack, and Pav, sprawled in the seat behind the other two Coneheads, seemed as uninterested in human interaction as ever.

Deciding that it was as safe as it ever could be to reveal his soft, bleeding heart, Rob asked, "We're friends, aren't we?"

Grimly humorous, Rob noted to himself how ironic it was that he should be posing this passionate demand to Rizzo. When the two of them had met in the locker room before tryouts and Rizzo had wanted to shake hands as if BU and the U hadn't been bitter hockey rivals throughout the '70's, Rob had resolved that he would be politely friendly, as was expected of any well-bred Minnesotan, but polite friendliness was just that.

It didn't translate into an interest in actually being friends or imply any future obligation to hang out together. In typical Minnesota fashion, Rob was prepared to talk pleasantly with Rizzo in practices, but it would have been several years before he considered spending leisure time with Rizzo, and, by that point, Rizzo would have returned to Boston, but all that had changed in Norway.

There was no point in pretending there was any distance between yourself and someone who had seen you collapse on ice like a weakling. Nothing could change the fact that anyone who had died and been reborn beside you would be bonded to you forever, and maybe even, if Mark was right, would play hockey with you in heaven for eternity.

"Of course we're friends," Rizzo reassured him. "We'll always be friends. You know that, Robbie."

"Well, friends are supposed to stick up for each other." Fiercely, Rob lifted his chin. "Otherwise, what's the point of friendship?"

"Mac, I wouldn't be a good friend if I let you risk something important to you on my behalf," pointed out Rizzo, as their bus exited the highway and followed signs to a twenty-four hour diner. "I don't want you sabotaging your dreams or doing anything stupid for my sake."

"I don't need your permission to ruin my life or be an idiot." Rob's eyes narrowed. "With or without you, I'm going to talk to Herb about Tim, but if you join me, you might be able to stop me from saying anything totally stupid."

"I need a dilemma like this in the same way I need a hole in my head." Rizzo flapped his hands hopelessly, and then conceded, "If you're determined to fight Herb, I'll accompany you. I'm not going to let you argue with him without back-up."

"Your loyalty is appreciated," remarked Rob, brown eyes agleam.

"I'm touched." Rizzo snorted. "Nobody who has ever met you would say that Minnesotans aren't stubborn, that's for sure."

"Minnesotans are hardy folk." Rob shrugged as the bus pulled into the diner's parking lot, and the team rose, clogging the aisle in the process of disembarking. "It comes from shoveling and seeing bits of your spirit intermingled with the resolute ice wads. If you survive that soul-crushing experience enough times, you believe you can defy nature, and nothing can go wrong when you feel that way."

Rizzo lost the opportunity to respond to this assertion in the noisy shuffle into the diner and the chaotic scramble for booths. As the harried waitress, who was probably thinking that even the world's most generous tip would never compensate for having to serve a team of rowdy hockey players in the middle of the night, handed out menus to the table of four that included Mark, O.C., Rizzo, and Rob, O.C. observed with more than a trace of a smug smirk, "I couldn't help but overhea the plan you were cooking up with Rizzo, Mac."

"Bet you could." Rob shot O.C. his most wilting glare, although he was more irritated at himself for forgetting that it was definitely possible to read and eavesdrop at the same time. In fact, Rob was known (and not much loved) for glancing up from a book he was reading on the bus to offer a snide remark about something a teammate had just said or done. He should have realized that if he could do that, so could O.C. "Did your mother not teach you that it's rude in at least ninety-nine percent of all societies to listen to comments plainly not meant for your ears?"

"She did, but I wasn't paying attention." O.C. sniggered. "I find it immensely rewarding to eavesdrop on conversations while ignoring words that are actually directed at me. It's a great way to steam up polite people."

"Keep talking, O.C., and I'll throw the ketchup bottle at your stupid head," muttered Rob, wondering what it would be like to actually engage in a food fight. Probably messy and undignified, he supposed, but didn't know and likely never would now that his days of childhood rambunctiousness were behind him.

"Do that, and I might not help you in your argument with Herb," O.C. declared smoothly, unimpressed with Rob's threat.

"You want to help me fight Herb?" echoed Rob, astonished as always to have proof that the enmity between the two of them had been transfigured into a peculiar, prickly but strong friendship.

"You wouldn't last a minute without me," O.C. snickered cockily. "And I do have some friends, not you, of course, on this team. I'd be standing up to Herb for them, not for you, obviously."

Rob opened his mouth to retort but was interrupted before he could begin by their waitress returning with a pitcher of iced water and a tray of glasses.

"What can I get you boys to eat?" asked their waitress, her pen poised over her notepad, as Rizzo poured water into each of the four cups and passed the filled glasses around the table.

"A bowl of oatmeal, please," Mark answered. Mark had the unshakable conviction that no eating establishment, no matter how greasy it smelled, could mss up as simple a dish as oatmeal. Even Rob's harrowing accounts of the U dining hall's skill at creating watery oatmeal with chunks of uncooked oats had failed to alter Mark's opinion on the essential incorruptibility of oatmeal.

"A cheeseburger, please," put in Rizzo, as the waitress finished scribbling Mark's order.

"Buffalo wings, please," O.C. added, and the waitress' pen continued to dash across her pad.

Rob paused as the waitress completed recording O.C.'s order, torn between asking for the chicken and wild rice hotdish or for the ham and cheese omelet. Ultimately deciding that a diner with a neon sign bragging about how breakfast was served all day probably took more pride in its breakfast foods than its dinner ones, he said when the waitress arched an inquiring eyebrow at him, "I'll have your ham and cheese omelet, please."

"Coming right up," the waitress trilled, sauntering toward the kitchen.

"I also want to talk to Herb with you," Mark stated as soon as their waitress disappeared.

"Are you positive?" Shocked, Rob nearly spit out a mouthful of the water he had been drinking. "The conversation might get heated, you see, and do you even really know how to argue?"

"I have siblings." Mark sipped his water. "Of course I know how to argue. It's practically against the law to have siblings and not fight with them."

"There's a devil behind Mark's angel face, after all." O.C. gave a satisfied laugh. "I bet he caused all sorts of mayhem in the Wisconsin locker room, and his dad was glad to have him be Herb's problem for a couple of months, especially since they're arch-enemies and all."

"I'm Badger Bob's vengeance," agreed Mark dryly. "You uncovered my secret, O.C. I'm undone."

"So, it's your overwhelming desire to annoy Herb that motivates you to argue with him?" Rob pressed, as their waitress returned with their meals.

Once they had thanked her and she had strode away from their table, Mark replied, shifting from playful to serious, "I don't plan to argue with Herb, Rob. I'm just going to firmly express my opinion about Harrer being brought in this late."

"Don't be naïve, Mark." Rob shook his head in reproach and continued between bites of omelet, "If you firmly express your opinion about Tim being here, it'll denigrate into an argument with Herb before you have a chance to catch your breath."

"Herb said that he expected me to be a leader on this team, and I promised that I wouldn't let him down." Mark shrugged as he spooned oatmeal into his mouth. "If he wants to rip into me for doing what he asked and keeping my word, it says more negative stuff about him as a coach than it does about me as a player. Anyway, I'm part of a team, and I've got to stick with it through thick and thin. As Ben Franklin or some other important Patriot said when signing the Declaration of Independence, we must all hang together or else we'll all hang separately."

"Apt quote." Rob pursed his lips. "Except it should be noted that what we're doing has more to do with declaring our interdependence than our independence."

"Well, Herb is a more terrifying enemy than the British." Rizzo chuckled into his cheeseburger. "Most of their generals were incompetent idiots."

"Yeah." O.C. twisted a buffalo wing exuberantly. "They were so pathetic that they won more battles than Washington and still lost the war. That's a special kind of failure right there. I'm not certain that English has words powerful enough to convey how humiliating that is: winning all the battles, but losing the war."

"I used to think that history was a boring archive of dates, but now I see that it is really a bunch of inspirational stories," remarked Rob, grinning crookedly. "I feel so much less despairing now that I realize we can lose our battle with Herb and still win the war."

"Glad I could provide comfort on the night of our momentous battle." O.C. lifted his glass in a mock toast. "Cheers."

"I drink to our imminent victory or defeat." Rob tilted his cup of water into his mouth with exaggerated enthusiasm. "Whatever is more auspicious."

"We'll leave that to historians to debate," Rizzo said, and, after that, there wasn't much time for discussion as the team paid for their meals and trickled out of the restaurant into the parking lot.

"We should talk to Herb alone," murmured Rob, yanking nervously at his fingers and pretending that the gesture was nothing more than an attempt to keep his extremities warm even though it was a balmy negative twenty degrees. "We don't want a whole busload of people hearing him rip us a new one. Got to keep up appearances. We definitely want to keep looking good—not too good, or people might think we're getting big-headed, but pretty good, at least."

Not that they would look particularly great having a shouting match with their coach in the middle of a parking lot, but there was no getting around that. They had to speak up quickly or they might lose their nerve and recover their survival instincts.

"True." Rizzo nodded. "We need to ask for a private word."

When nobody was eager to volunteer for the duty, O.C. pointed out, "You're the genius behind this operation, Mac, so you should take the initiative and ask Herb for a word."

"I've already taken initiative by staging this protest." Rob scowled. "Why don't you take some for a change?"

Before O.C. could offer a counter to this suggestion, Coach Patrick, who had probably been performing a head count as the team streamed back onto the bus, approached them, probing with a gentle grin, "Are you boys planning on getting on the bus, or were you thinking of becoming ice statues out here?"

Glancing around, Rob realized that everyone else on the team had boarded the bus. It was their last opportunity to back down and meekly join their teammates on the bus, but Rizzo, who had plainly chosen not to seize the chance, explained rather bravely, "We'd like to have a word with Herb."

"A word with Herb?" Coach Patrick's forehead furrowed as if this were a very dangerous or really suspicious thing to want. "Why?"

"Because we need to tell Herb what he should already know: it's madness bringing Harrer in this late," answered O.C., all vehemence.

"It's not fair for Herb to disregard all our hard work like this," Rob added, his tone quiet but intractable. "We have a right to tell him that."

"He's demanded a lot of commitment from us," Rizzo put in. "There's nothing unjust about us expecting the same amount from him."

"He should listen to us." Mark's voice and eyes were level, and Rob noted with relief that it sounded like his line mate really could argue with an authority figure, after all. "He doesn't have to agree with us, but he should hear what we've got to say. After all we've done for him, a word isn't too much to ask."

"All right, boys," agreed Coach Patrick, mild as ever. "I'll ask Herb to come out and have a word with you."

As Coach Patrick stepped onto the bus, O.C. mumbled, "Well, that's one argument won, at least. Let's keep the streak going, guys."

"Our next opponent is a little more difficult to beat," observed Rizzo wryly. "Hate to break it to you, Jack."

Studying the slippery pavement beneath his feet, Rob wondered darkly if he was the only one who truly appreciated how much of an uphill sludge the upcoming battle was going to be. After all, he hadn't understood fully himself until he head Coach Patrick repeatedly refer to them as "boys" as if they were still adolescents, instead of adults who could drive, drink, sign binding contracts, and be tried as adults in a court of law if they were accused of committing a crime. Nobody regarded an argument from a teenager as much more than whining or adolescent rebelliousness. That revelation hurt like a stinging slap on the cheek, especially because Coach Patrick had called them "boys" out of affection, not contempt or cruelty.

With Herb, Rob concluded, bracing himself as he watched Herb climb out of the bus after Coach Patrick, it would be even worse. Herb would see them as recalcitrant teenagers in need of a harsh lesson in respect and obedience. He would think they were far too young to have a right to an opinion that meant anything, but too old to be indulged with any lenience or tenderness. Not that this should have been surprising. The world was always trampling on young adults, and then heaping insult on top of injury by providing middle-aged people plenty of chances to wax nostalgic about the glory days of their youths, forgetting, of course, how eager they had been to grow up enough that others would actually listen to them when they spoke.

As Herb approached with Coach Patrick on his heels, Rob could already feel the crushing verdict of Minnesotan culture condemning him. He was about to shatter all the unwritten codes that governed Minnesotan society: _Don't think you're special (even if you are). Don't make a fuss about anything (even if you're setting yourself up to be a victim by remaining silent). Don't put a toe out of line (because you'll step on a land mine, and everyone will say you deserved to have everything blow up in your face since you dared to forget your place for a second). _Those were rules Rob knew and understood, but he was about to violate them all, ad his knowledge of them only made his offense more egregious…

He was so tempted to end the conflict before it could even being by chirping, "Don't worry, Herb. I'm not trying to change anyone or anything. In fact, I agree with you. All hockey players are pretty much the same. Not that you need my permission, but feel free to cut or add anyone you like to the roster." Because that was the nasty underbelly of Minnesota Nice that everyone tried to avoid the unpleasantness of mentioning. It was so tempting for people to pretend to be nice when they were screaming inside and feeling anything but friendly. The dangerous part of Minnesota Nice—the part that could lull you to sleep if you weren't careful—was the insidious idea that everything was just fine even if it all was going to hell in a handcart.

"This had better take about two minutes," warned Herb tersely as he reached them, and Rob wondered vaguely if that limit included the time Herb would undoubtedly take to rebut their arguments. Not that it mattered. Rob could already tell that this wasn't going to be a discussion, a dialog, a debate, or anything involving his opinion or those of his teammates assembled alongside him. After four years, he was an expert at reading Herb. He could translate the hidden, complex meanings of each of his coach's faces, tones, and sighs. Nothing about Herb indicated that he was willing to listen to what his players had to say right now.

Rebelliously, Rob allowed himself the fleeting satisfaction of imagining what would happen if they all refused to get on the bus until Herb heard them out. Of course, that probably wouldn't end well, he realized a second later. A bus boycott would be a lot more successful in Birmingham than in Minnesota, because Minnesota was freezing. Herb would probably just march back onto the bus and drive off without them, figuring that frostbite would teach them some manners. The last couple of days had made it plain that Herb was ready to wash his hands of them at the first excuse and leave them abandoned, staring down some highway alone. Sure, the diner probably had a pay phone Rob could use to call his parents or brothers for a lift to campus, but it wasn't as if it would be anything less than extremely embarrassing to explain how he and his teammates ended up stranded in some random diner's parking lot…

Obviously expecting Rob to speak up first since this whole scheme had been his invention, O.C. gave Rob a prodding glance, and a second later, Rizzo's eyes were also fixed on Rob in a distinctly anticipatory fashion. Clearly detecting the locus of O.C.'s and Rizzo's gaze, Herb turned to look at Rob, and Rob could almost hear him take a breath, readying himself for whatever foolhardy stunt headstrong Rob McClanahan was going to attempt next.

Rob knew that there were probably a lot of things Herb wanted to say to him. Maybe he wanted to ask Rob why he cared about Rizzo so much when they had only played together for a few months. Or why Rob had resisted the idea of Harrer being on Johnson's line or even the entire Olympic team from the moment Tim skated onto the rink without even giving it a chance of a snowball in July. Or perhaps it was more, like why in the last few months even the sight of Herb coming toward him was enough to raise Rob's guard.

Not prepared to open his big mouth yet, Rob looked at O.C. in a way that meant he wanted O.C. to lead the charge out of the defensive zone and then rubbed his palms together, trying to lower his blood pressure before he went into cardiac arrest.

"This is crazy, Herb." O.C.'s voice was tight, and Rob didn't know if the Boston native was more exasperated with him for his cowardice or Herb for inviting Harrer to join the team. "Bringing him in this late."

"We've got parents buying tickets." Rob took the pass and fired a shot, figuring that this was a solid angle of attack. It made them sound like devoted sons instead of selfish players concerned about their spots on the team, and, with all of his Olympic experience, Herb had to remember awkward pauses where he couldn't promise his family anything about his Olympic future. Those were the moments that made Rob not want to call home at all, because he dreaded having to hear his parents silently wondering whether they would be needed to cheer him on in Lake Placid or pick up the pieces of his broken heart when he found out that he wasn't going there, after all. They might act assured that Rob would make the team, because that was their job as supportive parents, but that wouldn't stop them from worrying about it, since that was their responsibility as concerned parents. All Rob wanted during those phone calls was to be able to give the right answer to that burning parental question. "Getting rooms. I mean, what are we supposed to tell them?"

That wasn't a bad point, Rob told himself, figuring that he would need a lot of positive self-talk to buoy him through this ordeal. It was about families, and families were too sacred in America for a coach to just attack them. Besides, it forced Herb to see his players as people—somebody's sons—for a few seconds, at least, and that could only be an advantage. It was harder to hurt someone who was actually human.

"And with one of us going home as it is," added O.C., satisfying his East Coaster urge to leave nothing implied, and causing Rob to contemplate whether it should mark a high or low point in both their existences that they were now capable of completing one another's thoughts when once they had been convinced that they had nothing in common.

Apparently unimpressed by this logic, Herb demanded with overwhelming hostility, "I guess I don't have to ask where you stand on this, huh, Rizzo?"

Rob _hated _the way Herb pronounced Rizzo's name like it were a rancid bite he were desperate to spit out before it contaminated him. Even more than that, he loathed Herb's casual assumption that this confrontation had been Rizzo's brainchild. The notion that Rizzo would manipulate other players to try to persuade Herb to keep him on the team sickened Rob, since that wasn't the sort of leader that Rizzo was.

Numb, Rob couldn't believe that Herb was taking this moment, this time, when he was strongest, away from him by refusing to even entertain the possibility that it was him—not Rizzo—who hatched this plan.

Chafing at the confines of the box Herb had so easily locked him into and determined not to allow Rizzo to take the fall for his sins, Rob said sharply, hoping his defensiveness would alert Herb to the fact that he was the one to blame for this mutiny, "This wasn't Rizzo's idea."

When Herb's angular face took on an expression that was a dead giveaway that he did not believe for a second this fervid claim, Rizzo intervened.

"You want me to say 'I'm scared of getting cut'? I'm scared of getting cut." Rizzo shrugged, and Rob was flooded with admiration for this leader who was strongest when he seemed most vulnerable and who was most courageous when he admitted to being afraid. "Everyone is."

"We just want it to be fair, Herb." O.C.'s voice managed to be both pleading and insistent, and Rob thought that anyone except Herb would be moved by this open appeal to justice.

"Don't try to tell me what's fair," rapped out Herb, and Rob decided that he could add the fact that Herb Brooks was lunatic enough to believe he could re-invent the definition of justice whenever it suited him to the list of Joys of Playing under a Psychotic Coach that Rob had been accumulating steadily since his freshman year at the U. It was both his pride and shame that the list had over two hundred items on it. Maybe one day he would find closure for all the psychological and emotional abuse Herb had dumped on him over four years by using it as fuel for a campfire or something else appropriately dramatic. "He was right there with us back in Colorado."

_Along with a hundred other hockey players, so that's nothing special_, Rob scoffed mentally. The important thing wasn't that Tim had been in Colorado; it was that he hadn't been in Oslo, where this team had been forged not in a fiery furnace but on a frigid sheet of ice. If Herb needed that explained to him, he, as a coach, had completely lost his memory of what it was like to be a player and to experience real camaraderie with a team.

The fierce dedication to teammates inevitably resulted in dividing the world between insiders—one's teammates—and outsiders—everybody else. Some outsiders—parents, a clapping crowd, Doc, coaches on a good day, and refs who made fair calls—were allies who deserved respect and affection for supporting the team that was the almighty "us" that must be victorious at all costs to the individual who was nothing compared to the team. Other outsiders—interlopers, coaches on bad days, refs who made biased calls, and opposing teams—became the enemy, the "them," that needed to be destroyed before "they" could ruin "us." It was that drive to protect "us" from "them" that was the life blood of team sports, and, to the 1980 Olympic team, Tim would always be a "them," not one of "us." That, like so many things lately, should have been self-evident to Herb.

"That was six months ago!" Rizzo exclaimed, and Rob wondered if they would be better off trying to explain the emotions behind team fellowship to a battleship, which would probably have a deeper understanding of human feelings than Herb.

"And you don't think he's been playing for the last six months?" retorted Herb, all scorn, as if the fact that Tim had been active for the past half year automatically proved he was worthy of replacing Rizzo or some other player on the roster.

"Not with us, he hasn't," Rizzo snapped, and Rob decided that Herb should take a sick pride in his ability to raise anyone's hackles within a minute of conversation. That was a unique kind of irascibility.

"So?" Herb's contemptuous question made Rob want to howl out his aggravation that someone so smart (because, whatever else Herb might have been, he was always in contention for the sharpest tool in the shed) could be so oblivious to what would have been instantly obvious to a Pee Wee with a brain the size of an ant's.

"So, there's a difference!" Rizzo's protest channeled the exasperation and desperation Rob felt at this coach's failure to understand the unwritten, mutually binding pledge of loyalty between players and coaches. Players were expected to give everything to team and coach; in return, coach was supposed to honor sacrifice and hard work at least enough not to replace a dedicated player with a newcomer at the last possible minute.

At their level, players didn't need pats on the shoulder every time they scored. They just needed a coach they could trust, and, until Tim had come to practice, Rob had trusted Herb despite the rigorous conditioning and draining mind games. He wanted to be able to trust Herb again-to hear Herb say, with or without words, that bringing Tim in had been nothing more than a twisted mind game to increase team unity or something.

"Like hell there is," barked Herb. "All I know is that kid can flat-out play."

The subtext, which could have been interpreted by anybody whose IQ didn't begin with a decimal point, that Rizzo couldn't play made Rob wish that Tim skated like a moose shot by a tranquilizer gun. Unfortunately, that wasn't true, since, last season, Tim had been the U's leader in power play and game-winning goals. Back in Colorado, Rob had been astonished that he had made the cut while Tim had not, but so much had changed since then, and now Rob couldn't imagine Tim on the team without his stomach knotting like a pretzel.

"What, and we can't?" O.C. snapped, his indignation making it clear that Rob wasn't the only who had picked up Herb's far from subtle implication.

"Ah, he moves the puck, he's got great vision on the ice, soft hands on the stick…" Herb rattled off testily, and Rob shook his head impatiently, because either Herb was acting dumb to rile them up or he was steering the argument down a tangent, trying to make this about Harrer's skill when it was about justice. Either way, whether Herb was being deliberately obtuse or not, he was missing the point, and that was absolutely infuriating.

"That's not the point!" Rob burst out before he even realized his mouth was moving around the words. Dang, he recognized a millisecond later as he heard his own angry voice, that had been out loud and very out loud at that. Worse still, he had cut right through the middle of Herb's glowing list of Tim's wonderful qualities on ice.

Interrupting might not be a big deal to East Coasters, who were always speaking on top of whoever they were talking to and expecting whoever they were chatting with to return the favor by interrupting them whenever that person wanted a word in edgewise, but in Minnesota it was a serious offense. Interrupting somebody meant that you perceived whatever they were yammering on about as so stupid and irrelevant to your life that you could not be bothered to waste even the five seconds it took to allow them to finish their sentence. That was why interrupting someone was about as rude as borrowing your neighbor's shovel without permission and not returning it in time for the next blizzard.

Silence from Herb. Rob would pay for that one for awhile. He could tell. He wanted to press his advantage, but he fell silent, knowing he would say something ugly, unforgivable, and irrevocable about Tim if he went on. He wasn't going to let himself be tempted into reeling off Tim's weak points (although he could have if he wanted to, because he had been Tim's line mate too long not to have seen them all). There was a fine line between not letting Rizzo be thrown under the bus and hurling Tim beneath the oncoming wheels. Rob intended to stay on the right side of that line, since that was the compromise he had made with his conscience to guarantee that he wasn't, technically, betraying Tim or Rizzo.

_Never, ever show that you're mad or frustrated,_ Rob reminded himself, giving himself a crash course in what passed for arguing in Minnesota since he was obviously in need of remedial lessons. _Even if you are seething inside, it is imperative that you maintain a blank face and your regular posture. Oh, and don't let your words betray you either. Even if you hate a person's idea or are repulsed by their actions, don't say anything because talking about it will only make it worse. Bottle up all your rage to share with your family members and friends from Kindergarten. They may not want to hear you tear the offender apart limb for limb, but they will if that's what it takes to prevent you from having a total breakdown in a random parking lot. _

"I'll tell you what else he's got." Picking up where he had been before Rob had cut him off, Herb glared at first Rob and then the rest of the players before him. "He's got the attitude I want on and off the ice, so somebody here better tell me why I shouldn't be giving him a hell of a look!"

Damn. If this was going to be an argument about personality, there was nothing Rob could say to persuade Herb that Rizzo was a better leader for this team than Tim could ever be without violating his self-imposed stricture about not making any negative comments about Tim. He was weary of this already, tired of battling and putting up fronts, of having to think so hard about his next attack or defense.

Wishing that he could come up with some statement that would completely destroy Herb's argument without directly hurting Tim, Rob stared at Herb, at the expression on his face that suggested he knew how they felt, what they thought, everything about them. Like they were puzzles, instead of people, he had created and knew the pre-determined solution to every time.

Desperately wanting one of his teammates to prove Herb wrong about what they were thinking, how they were feeling, and what they could do next, Rob looked around at Mark, Rizzo, and O.C. Rizzo and O.C. seemed as stumped as Rob, but Mark was wearing the determined, focused expression that usually proceeded a maneuver that nobody else would have dared to imagine, nonetheless attempt. That was what made Mark such a great player: he spotted opportunities that nobody else did and instinctively understood how to take advantage of those chances. Maybe Mark's genius was about to save them all again, and Rob, as a line mate, would not be able to do much except act as if he had a clue what was about to happen and was prepared to offer support if necessary.

"Because we're a family," said Mark in the closest Rob had ever heard him come to a shout.

"What?" Herb asked, sounding as if he wasn't sure whether it was his ears that were failing or Mark's mind, and Rob readied himself to unleash a barrage of sarcasm if Herb dared to rip into Mark. Ever since they had become line mates, Rob had seen it as his job to protect Mark—to do whatever it took to keep the team's MVP safe. If an opponent got too rough with Mark on the ice, Rob's stick would have an overwhelming need to go where that opponent's body was, because getting a minor penalty for defending Mark Johnson was worth it any day of the week. Rob would never be the biggest guy on the ice, but he could be the most determined, especially if he was fighting to keep a teammate in one piece. If anyone, even Herb, attacked Mark, Rob was poised to strike…

"We're a family," repeated Mark firmly, his words forceful with the unstated declaration that families stuck together and only scumbags tried to tear them apart.

"A family?" Herb echoed as if he had never heard the term before.

"Yeah." Rob nodded as if he frequently thought that they were a perfect poster for large, happy, and definitely not dysfunctional families everywhere.

"Yeah," added first O.C. and then Rizzo.

As Rizzo and O.C. started to nod as well, Rob figured that if a bird quaked like a duck, waddled like a duck, swam like a duck, and flew like a duck, it was a duck. In the same way, a group of people who had communal dinners, inside jokes, shared stories of triumphs and defeats, collective memories of pain and pleasure, as well as a strong vision of their future together had to be called a family even if none of them shared an ounce of blood. For heaven's sake, they even had a control-freak father in Herb to provide discipline, a kindly uncle in Coach Patrick to offer encouragement, and a wise grandfather in Doc to fret over their health.

"And this is the family that you want to go to Lake Placid with?" Herb had abruptly lost the fire that had brought him raging out of the bus, prepared to vivisect them all.

"Definitely," O.C. answered without a trace of hesitation.

"Without a doubt." Rizzo was all confidence.

"Absolutely." Mark, obviously, wasn't about to give up now.

"Wouldn't have it any other way." Rob meant every word, and he was used to getting his way, in the end. It wasn't, in his opinion, being a brat; it was persistence. Everybody had things they wanted to see happen, and some people were just better at transforming those visions into reality. Rob's secret to achieving his dreams was not to lose faith in his ability to bring about whatever he wanted to accomplish, even when most other beings would have long ago concluded that events were not going to go the way they desired, so they'd be better of directing their energies elsewhere. Rob didn't know if this approach made him happier or better than anyone else in the long run, but it was his way, and, in typical stubborn Rob McClanahan fashion, he wasn't about to change it for anybody.

"Timmy Harrer can help us, boys." For a moment, Rob could feel the wall Herb always built between himself and his players falling, and he thought that you couldn't just plan a moment when things got back on track, just as you couldn't plan the moment you lost your way in the first place. "Then I'm going to send him home."

Shocked by this insight into what Herb was thinking because Herb never shared anything with his players, Rob exchanged a baffled look with Mark that said: _Are our ears developing a rich fantasy life, or did Herb really say he was going to send Tim home? _

Numbly, Rob wondered whether he should be feeling remorseful about Tim's fate: used and discarded like an old tissue by Herb, brought in to stir up a team's jealous need to succeed to spite an interloper, and given the false hope of going to the Olympics only to have it snatched away from him. Biting the inside of his cheek, Rob told himself that he couldn't save everyone from pain and that he shouldn't feel guilty for fighting to bring the best out of a bad situation. When Tim's Olympic dream was crushed, it would be Herb, not Rob, who broke Tim's heart, so maybe one day an uncomplicated friendship could resume between him and Tim once Tim had time to forget that Rob had readily chosen Rizzo over Tim.

_Tim, I always meant to be the ground beneath your feet, to be your voice when you couldn't speak, to be your strength when you felt like you had nothing but your heart up your sleeve, and to be the one beside you when you fell_, Rob thought, trying not to ask himself whether he would ever have the chance or the courage to say these words to Tim, because he didn't want to think that there were some wounds that even time could not heal and some wrongs that could never be made right. _I wasn't lying when I told you all those years ago that I was going to be your friend forever. I just couldn't keep my promise, so I hope that you'll never again be deceived by the likes of me. _

"We've got one more to get down to twenty." Herb's brisk voice sliced into Rob's reverie, and then, just as easily as Herb had closed the distance between himself and his players, he opened it again. Rob could almost see the chasm widening, becoming an inseparable rift. "You understand me?"

"Yep," replied Rob softly, because he did understand that hard arithmetic and that, where this team was concerned, his heart would break for the last time when Herb made that final cut, because no matter who was chopped off the roster, they would take some of Rob with them. No matter who Herb cut, it would, in a way, be Rob.

That wasn't enough to prevent Rob from smiling and giving Mark a celebratory clap on the arm. They had won an argument with Herb, and the euphoria of that was just settling in. It was like learning another way of something instinctive like walking or talking. Changing something you already thought you'd mastered and figured out on your own. This would have to be learned slowly, making the rules up as they went along. It was unchartered territory, as vast as the Grand Canyon and as distant as the North Star.

As a family, they would explore this brave new world, and family would be the beacon that guided them from the end to the beginning, to the memory of where they had come from. Family would be the promise that they would remember what they discovered on this journey, so they could return wiser, more filled with compassion for others and themselves. Family would be their talisman, their memory of love, and where there was love, there was no frailty, pain, or loss. If you were part of a family like this once, you were part of it forever.


End file.
